


The First Nonary Game

by airdeari



Category: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - Fandom, Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 16:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 101,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9394292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airdeari/pseuds/airdeari
Summary: A tale of nine children aboard a sinking ship, and the unbelievable story of how they survived.





	1. D-Deck

**Author's Note:**

> who do i even think i am. let's do this, friends.

The heartbreaking factor that makes childhood trauma more impactful than trauma in adulthood is that a child is so new to this world that trauma becomes a normal part of their understanding of life. When Aoi Kurashiki woke to the sound of an explosion in an unfamiliar room that shifted underneath him as if a weak earthquake were rocking it, he did not question why. He subconsciously accepted that this was just what his terrible life decided to throw at him next.

It made him resilient. He jumped off of the bunkbed, landed with a splash, and got down to business.

Having seen the metal door from the bed, he raced towards it, sloshing through inches of what smelled like seawater. Before he shoved against the handle with all his might, he only saw the red paint on the door as a strange splotch. When the door refused to budge, he gritted his teeth, stepped back, and saw it for what it truly was.

The number [4].

 _The number [5]_.

His mouth fell open, and then his eyes squeezed shut, and he brought his hands to his face as he dropped to one knee and curled over his churning stomach. Wherever he was, his sister had been taken there, too.

If the numbers were anything to go by, she might be in the room right next door. He reached for the left wall, then faltered to the right. Not knowing which room was hers was the only thing keeping him from punching holes in the walls. If he closed his eyes, he might have believed the water had already risen over his head, it was so hard to breathe.

He looked left again, this time to examine the new bracelet on his wrist. Though he did not yet know anything about it, he hated it at first sight.

 

In another room, where the number emblazoned on the door was [8], Nona Kashiwabara stood on her tiptoes with an uncomfortable, trembling frown, trying to keep the water from reaching her grey tights.

_In another room, very far away, where the number on the door was still [8], Ennea Kashiwabara was keeping her feet dry by climbing on the bunkbeds. The room was small enough to get around that way._

Nona ascended the ladder and said aloud, seemingly to no one, “Thanks, sis.”

_“You’re welcome,” Ennea replied with a proud smile, also seemingly to no one._

The twins were not surprised by their ability to communicate with one another. It had been a connection present since birth that only grew more sophisticated with age. Nona tried to use it to cheat on Japanese literature tests for books she didn’t want to read, while Ennea more often used it to bother her sister into bringing her food and drinks when she noticed Nona was downstairs. Because of this, they had also each learned how to block each other out. By straining in the opposite way, they were able to make their connection stronger than ever.

They had always just thought of it as a twin thing. For years, they had thought that every pair of twins experienced this connection.

_Ennea had climbed to the top of the other bunkbed in hopes of a better perspective. With a gasp, she noticed the red key taped to the mirror._

Nona bobbled around the corner of the bed to reach the same place. Her foot slipped between the rungs and knocked a flimsy pillow aside. Something rustled like paper from underneath.

_“Wait, mine’s got the paper, too,” Ennea said after kicking aside the same pillow in her chamber. “We should split up and search. I’ll look on this half of the room.” She gestured to the area around her bunk bed._

“Wait, that means _I_ have to switch sides,” Nona complained. “You’re just—you’re trying to stay away from all the water!”

The gushing porthole was on Nona’s designated side of the room. She was sure that hers had a heavier flow than the window in her sister’s location.

_“Your feet are already wet, anyway,” said Ennea._

Ennea’s teasing was keeping Nona calm.

_Nona’s reactions were keeping Ennea calm._

 

In the pocket of his jacket, Light Field kept his six keycards perfectly aligned and stacked from when he had taken them out of the suitcases. He ran his right hand over the innards of what he knew was the blue suitcase, but the only things to be found were those keycards. There was supposed to be a file.

At the first wave of water to touch his knee cap, he decided to ignore the missing components and proceeded to the door. He would not have been able to read it had he found it, and he already knew what it said anyway.

_Compute a [digital root] with the following steps…_

He had always been good with numbers—he had always been good at anything intellectual—so he understood the concept even though he had only caught a glimpse of the rules. He could only hope that his little sister would understand that she could open her door by sliding in the first, fifth, and sixth cards in the stack. [1 + 8 + 9] would make a digital root of [9], which would likely open her door. In synchronization with her, he slid in the cards.

_She had picked [3], [6], and [9] instead, but the results would be the same. Her lock emitted a chirp of approval—_

And his lock gave a decidedly different beep, sounding almost annoyed. He startled out of his connection to his sister. He saw nothing, felt nothing but the icy water creeping up his knees. His hand, holding the keycards splayed between his knuckles, began to shake.

It was unlikely, but possible, that he had mistaken the order of the keycards in his pocket. It was similarly improbable that the keycards had been placed into his suitcases in a different sequence than they had appeared in Clover’s, since they had been in numerical order.

In a moment of inspiration, he realized it was quite likely that he was considering the wrong pieces of the equation as the unknown. Although he had seen, through Clover’s eyes, that the number on her door, and on her bracelet, was [9], that was no reason to assume that his own door and bracelet read the same. There were only nine possible numbers that could be achieved via digital root, and he had eliminated [9]. His best option was to run through the remaining numbers and calculate those digital roots with the cards he assumed he had in hand.

Luckily for him, he started at the beginning, calculating a digital root of [1] first. He picked what he hoped was the keycard with [1] on it—he had been so sure of his initial solution that he had not kept perfect track of where he put the swiped cards—plus the [3] and [6] from his pocket. The lock accepted his combination with the same chirp as Clover’s, and he heard a heavy lock click. He barely had to do more than turn the doorknob, and the pressure of the water behind the door did the rest of the work.

“Hey! You!”

It was a boy’s voice, roughened in equal parts by fear and by the first touch of testosterone. Though the call echoed off of what must have been metallic walls, he determined that both it and the splash of quick steps through knee-high water came from his right. He turned, keeping his eyes half-closed.

“What’s your number?!” the boy demanded. “The one on your door—or your bracelet, _whatever_.”

“[1],” replied Light, a furrow in his brow. “Should I ask you the same?”

The boy didn’t answer, except with another pounding of steps breaking the surface tension of too much water, this time away from Light. He heard a groan of metal, the same as when Light had shoved against his door with all his might. He presumed the boy was trying to yank open a door.

“You’ll just cause this place to flood even faster,” Light muttered, rolling his eyes.

Either a foot or a fist thudded into the door; likely a foot by the way the water sloshed before the movement, like the boy was lifting his leg out of the water. “My sister’s in there!” he yelled. “If you’re door [1], then this is door [5], and my sister’s—”

“Your sister is in another location entirely.” Light frowned. “Couldn’t you…?”

He cut himself off before saying “tell”. It was foolish to presume that this boy was connected to his sister in the same strange way that Light was connected to his. He did not know why the idea had even occurred to him.

“How the hell do you know that?!” the boy shouted. “Who the fuck _are_ you, anyway?!”

Light could not very well say that he was a gifted and unusual child with a special psychic link to his younger sister, and that he knew by the intangible texture of the thoughts and feelings pouring into his head that she was far away, so instead he said, “We should evacuate to higher ground.”

A door burst open somewhere between them. The echo space of the air expanded, and the water roared with a new timbre. Light shivered as a new wave lapped at his thighs, moving with enough speed to force him to take a haphazard step. A single step knocked him out of alignment. He lost track of the walls.

“Close the door!” he called. “We need to block the flooding!”

He held out his arms as if pretending to steady himself while searching for a point of reference. It was only as an afterthought that he snapped his left hand back into his pocket. His mother told him over and over that it looked real. Clover’s vision did not lie. It was waxy, it was eerily smooth, it was darker than his right hand.

He was going to have to tell. He still hated telling. He preferred keeping his eyes pointed at the ground and coming across as too socially inept to make eye contact. In all other aspects of his life, he wanted to be extraordinary, but when it came to facing another person in ordinary life and having them wonder at all of his broken pieces, he just wanted to be normal.

 

When the small boy in the green cardigan could not wrestle his own door closed—door [3], if Aoi was even right about the doors being sequential—Aoi grimaced and shoved it back in place. The pale boy from door [1] stood vigil. He looked like he could have been older than Aoi, and Aoi certainly looked like he could be younger. These circumstances made Aoi presume he was being babied, which was something he had not needed for seven years and certainly did not want now.

The boy in green was soaked to halfway up his shorts. His face shone enough that Aoi could not tell whether he had been crying or just dunked his face underwater while looking for clues to escape his room. The way he grabbed the wall and panted like he had not had a breath of air for three minutes also suggested both possibilities. His bracelet was wet, but it still read [3].

“What the hell’re you waitin’ around for?!” Aoi shouted at both boys. “Go!”

Boy [3] did not need to be told twice, but boy [1] stood motionless until boy [3] had passed him. “She isn’t here,” he said like a warning, before following in boy [3]’s wild footsteps.

Despite those words, Aoi yanked and banged on the door he knew was [5]. The water crept higher as his energy sank. The realization that this door would not budge made his limbs turn to jelly. He rammed his head against the door and screamed her name.

Farther down the hallway, another door opened.

She could not have been older than nine. Her short hair was dark and dripping, a red hue shining in it from the dim lights. One strap of her sopping overalls had fallen off of her shoulders. Her face was a twisted mess of tears, mucous, and anguish.

Gritting his teeth, Aoi raced to her door, jumping the wave that had come out of it. He rammed it shut, grabbed her by the elbow, and ran towards the faintly glowing staircase at the end of the hall.

When he saw the young, brown-haired girl standing among the other children crowded around the grand staircase, her knee-high boots still dry at the top, he let out a tremendous sigh of relief. His hand fell limp from the little girl’s arm as he staggered up the last few stairs, a dumb smile playing out on his face.

But when he saw her cloudy, dazed eyes, he realized that boy [1] was right. Akane Kurashiki was not here. She was very, very far away.


	2. The Central Staircase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> emeto warning!! it’s not graphic but It Happens.

“Do you think there’s still people down there?” asked one of the children when the final two players arrived on C-Deck, panting and shivering and dripping onto the tile floor. They were not close enough to the hidden cameras to show the details of their faces, but, of course, that mattered little to a man like Gentarou Hongou, anyway.

“How many of us are there now?” said one of the older boys, making the motion of bouncing his hand around to count heads he could not see. “I have a hunch that there should be nine of us in total.”

Hongou flicked the switch on the intercom and began the introduction he had been dreaming of saying every night for the past month.

“Smart boy. There should be nine. That’s correct,” he praised. “Welcome to the Nonary Game.”

* * *

The kids had scarcely enough time to look at one another before the deep voice echoed throughout the corridor, coming simultaneously from the multiple speakers hidden in the vicinity. It sounded warm, and it sounded familiar.

“I’ll keep this brief, of course, since… well, as you may have already gathered, the nine of you are passengers on a sinking ship,” said the man. “Not to worry. I have made sure it will stay afloat for another nine hours.”

“What the fuck?” Aoi uttered. He glanced at the small girl he had dragged up the staircase with a hint of remorse for his coarse language, but he still said it again. “What the actual _fuck_?”

“The way to win the Nonary Game, then, is to _escape_ ,” continued the voice. “To do so, you will have to solve puzzles similar to the ones you all solved to make it to this floor. And like that puzzle, the next puzzles you face will _also_ be… incomplete.”

Most of the children frowned in confusion. Light nodded solemnly, while Nona dropped her jaw in a moment of realization.

“Recall, my dear children.” They could hear the gentle smile in his voice as he spoke. “When you found the key cards for the door to your rooms, how did you know which cards to insert into the scanner? There were no instructions left for you. Yet you all knew that the cards required were the three that composed the digital roots of your numbers, and you all understood how to calculate a digital root.”

“Oh,” gasped one of the older boys, a teen with long, messy hair, rips in his wet jeans, and pins on his jacket. “ _Oh_.”

“Wait… how _did_ I know that?” whispered a girl, the one with short, layered hair and a plaid skirt. She clapped a hand over her chest, gripping her sweater vest with white fingers.

When the deep voice let out a jolly laugh over the speakers, they fell silent, and the blood drained from their faces. He had told them that they were aboard a sinking ship, and he was laughing to himself about it.

“We’ll get to the _fascinating_ story of ‘how’ in due time,” he said, “but first, while we’re on the topic, let me speak about how digital roots will continue to play into this game. You may have noticed that each of you has a different number on your bracelet.”

Nona’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh! Really?” she asked, holding out her wrist to compare. Akane gave a confident nod and lifted her bracelet to show her [5].

“Let’s introduce ourselves, shall we?” said the voice over the speakers. “Bracelet [1] is Light.”

Light crossed his arms, right over left, as his name was announced, so that no one could check his bracelet to see if this boy who barely reacted really was the one called Light. He refused to meet their eyes.

“Bracelet [2] is Ren.”

The boy with the long, messy hair flinched to hear his name. He gave skeptical glances at the other children.

“Bracelet [3] is Hideyoshi.”

Hideyoshi was caught in the middle of sliding his suspenders off of his shoulders to keep his damp shorts from clinging so tightly to his legs. He quickly shrugged his green sweater back onto his shoulders and stood at attention, adjusting his glasses.

“Bracelet [4] is Aoi.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Aoi shouted in reply. Hideyoshi leaned away from him uneasily, and the girl in the sweater vest scoffed and rolled her eyes.

“Bracelet [5] is Violet.”

Aoi’s eyes went wide. He stole a glance at Akane, who was too far gone in her own little world to react to being called the wrong name.

“Bracelet [6] is Yuuki.”

The girl in the sweater vest gave a small “hmph” and folded her arms like Light.

“Bracelet [7] is Nobu.”

A large boy in a red sweater, striped with a white chevron, raised his hand and nodded to the other players.

“Bracelet [8] is Nona.”

She tried to follow Nobu’s friendly gesture with one of her own, a peace sign, but she could not get a smile to form on her lips, and her hand shook a little.

“Bracelet [9] is Claire.”

The girl in the overalls jolted her head up, eyes wide, as if she had been in a trance until this moment.

“And my name is Gentarou Hongou. I’ll be your guide throughout the game, though I’m afraid I won’t be of much help.”

Light mouthed his name as if he were casting a silent spell to kill the man.

“Your bracelet numbers are what will determine how you proceed through the Nonary Game. Like the doors in your rooms down on D-Deck, there are doors throughout this ship that have numbers on them, and you will only be able to unlock them by scanning a group of numbers for which the digital root matches the number on the door. The numbers you will be scanning are your bracelets.”

“Oh, guys, up here,” whispered Nona, eagerly gesturing up the stairs. Some of the children had already seen it, but Aoi, Hideyoshi, and Light followed close on her heels to the doors on B-Deck. Aoi shivered when he saw the [4] and [5] painted in bloodlike red on the weathered iron.

“These doors have certain rules to them,” said Hongou, as the other children slowly made their way up to the same deck. “You may only scan three, four, or five bracelets to compute the digital root for each door. And after the door is opened, only those who scanned their bracelets may then pass through the door.”

There was an angry flash in Aoi’s eyes, a mischievous glint in Nona’s eyes, and a curious spark in Light’s downcast eyes that all silently begged the question, “And what if we don’t?”

“Of course, we needed to ensure you follow these rules,” he answered before they could ask, “so, unfortunately, there is an… _incentive_. Your bracelets are… detonators for tiny, powerful _bombs_ that we’ve inserted into your intestines. There is another scanner on the other side of each door, and if the same bracelets that verified on the first side do not verify on the opposite side…”

He was cut off by a little girl’s throaty cough and a splatter against tile. Akane fell to her knees, holding her hands over her mouth.

Claire shrieked in disgust, and Hideyoshi gave a drawn-out, “ _Ew._ ” Aoi darted to Akane’s side, but Nona beat him there.

“ _No!_ ” shouted Hongou. “You _cannot_ remove the bombs! _Absolutely not!_ ”

Aoi was reaching without qualm for his uvula until, at that last plaintive cry, he realized he recognized the voice. Though he had heard Hongou’s name before, he had misplaced it in his memory. He had not forgotten the desperate sound of Hongou’s raised voice.

“Are you okay?” asked Nona, rubbing Akane’s back. “Your name’s Violet, right?”

“There’s no way to remove the bombs from your bodies at this point. They’re too far along in your digestive track.” Hongou gave a shuddering sigh to settle his rage. “If you don’t follow the rules of the Nonary Game, your bracelet will detonate the bomb. You’ll be completely destroyed.”

Tears rolled down Akane’s cheeks faster than she could dry them with the sleeves of her pink sweater. “Why?” she whispered through a dry throat. “Why would this _happen_?”

“Do you understand?” said Hongou. It sounded as if he had gotten very close to the microphone. He was speaking softly, but his voice was still loud and clear. The weight of his breath echoed all the way up the stairs. “If you do not attempt to escape, you will drown. If you do not follow the rules of escape, you will explode. I _implore_ you. You must play the Nonary Game _._ ”

It was hard to decide which side of Hongou was worse: his detached laughter or this, the plea of a man at the mercy of nine children’s will to live.

“Behind these doors, you will find the puzzles I spoke of. Incomplete puzzles,” he said. “But how can you be expected to solve puzzles when you haven’t been given all of the clues?”

As Nona helped Akane to her feet and away from the mess she had made, she gazed uneasily up at the ceiling, as if looking for the source of the sound that emanated from all around them.

“As you might know already, somewhere else, in a place very similar to this, a different bracelet [1] belongs to a girl named Clover, who happens to be Light’s sister.”

Light pulled back his lips to bare his teeth, and his eyes lit up with a flash of anger.

“And in that same place, bracelet [2] belongs to Aiko, Ren’s sister. And [3] to Sachiko, and [4] to Akane, and [5] to Reed, [6] to Hideki, [7] to Kenshin, [8] to Ennea, and [9] to Holly. All of your brothers and sisters are in a place that is almost identical to this one, all wearing the same bracelet as you.”

Aoi shivered. All of the pieces were coming into place. Akane was not supposed to be here. Akane was supposed to be in that other place, wearing bracelet number [4], while another girl named Violet should have been the one here, wearing bracelet [5]. He did not know the reason for any of it, let alone what this glaring mistake could mean, but he knew he did not want to bring any attention to it until he understood what was going on. He could not tell whether Akane was keeping quiet because she was of the same mind or because she was too lost in thought to notice what was going on.

“He’s… he’s wrong,” Light uttered as Hongou spoke.

Aoi flinched. “Wh—whaddaya mean, he’s…”

He trailed off as an afterthought. By asking the question, he would draw attention to himself and Akane.

“My sister, Clover.” Light shook his head, his eyes squeezed shut. “She’s not wearing bracelet [1]. She has bracelet [9].”

“The difference between this ship and the facility your siblings are in is this: their puzzles are complete.” Hongou had not heard their conversation. “Your brothers and sisters will go through the same doors as you and have all the materials at hand to solve the puzzles. You are going to rely on their knowledge to escape your own rooms. It’s the only way.”

Hideyoshi frowned as he pushed his glasses up his nose by grabbing the rims of the right lens. “Wait, can—can—can they talk to us?” he asked.

“That’s a fine question, boy,” said Hongou with a warm chuckle. “ _Can_ they talk to you?”

A clock at the top of the stairway rang out. They all jumped at the first chime, and bristled at every subsequent one. Hongou spoke through the tolling of the bell.

“That is the purpose of the Nonary Game. This is an experiment,” he said. “My hypothesis is… if your other option is death, you will have to figure out a way.”

The ninth and final chime gave a lonely echo through the hall, taking ages to die out completely.

“The number [9] door is your exit. Get through it, and you will leave this ship alive. I promise,” said Hongou. “Let the Nonary Game begin.”

* * *

It took ten seconds of silence from the speakers for the children to realize they were now on their own. Aoi broke the silence by saying, “So we’re fucked.”

“Stop cussing,” snapped Yuuki, folding her thin arms. “It doesn’t make you sound cool.”

“You think I’m cussin’ to sound cool?!” Aoi shouted. “We’re gonna fuckin’ _die_!”

“Hey, c’mon, let’s focus,” said Nobu, imposing his small but broad body between Yuuki and Aoi. “We just gotta do what the guy says, go through the doors, solve the puzzles, and we’ll get out, right?”

“He said the puzzles are impossible,” Aoi retorted. “This is bullshit.”

“But they’re not impossible in Building Q,” mumbled Ren, tangling his fingers in his hair.

Yuuki frowned. “Building Q?”

Ren frowned, too. “Y’know, the place our siblings are in.” His voice did not rise above a low murmur even when he was speaking to someone else. “Didn’t he… say that?”

“Let’s—let’s—let’s just hurry up and—and go through the doors, c’mon,” Hideyoshi whined, an urgent tremor in his squeaky voice. “We all escaped from those—those rooms downstairs, right? He said those were supposed to be impossible, too, so—so—so what’s the big deal? The answer was—was _obvious_.”

“Yeah… yeah, it _was_ obvious.” Ren nodded, but he was still frowning.

“Did you—did you—did we look everywhere for any other doors?” asked Hideyoshi. “Or—or—or—or is it just these two?”

“I was out first, and then Ren,” said Nona, raising her hand and pointing at the soft-spoken, long-haired boy. “We split up and looked everywhere. There’s other doors, but they’re all locked, and none of them have numbers like this. I don’t think we’re supposed to go that way.”

“So, what, we’re _supposed_ to go through these creepy-ass doors?” Aoi grumbled, glaring at the masses of iron.

“I don’t believe we have any other choice, Aoi,” said Light in a calm voice, almost like a sigh. “These are the only doors we have the capacity to open. If you would prefer to sit here and wait for this ship to sink, that’s your choice, but bracelet [5] might have a complaint to make about that.”

Aoi’s whole face seized up along with his body. Somewhere in the twitch, he betrayed a glance to Akane. “Bracelet [5]?” he repeated. “W-why would…”

Light swept his right hand towards the wall with the iron doors. “Digital roots,” he explained. “I’ve been calculating them for these two doors. If we remove [4] from our group of numbers, then [5] would also have to stay behind to make the math work out.” He returned his hand to his chin and furrowed his brow in thought. “I suppose we could also remove two bracelets with a digital root of [5] and it would be equivalent. [2] and [3], perhaps, or [6] and [8], [5] in addition to [9]…”

“Jesus Christ, shut the hell _up_ ,” Aoi roared. “I’ll go, alright?! I’m just sayin’ I don’t like it.”

“Someone here’s really good at math,” Nona whispered when she thought no one was paying attention. “Can you hear him?”

“Excellent. Then let’s decide our teams, shall we?” replied Light, smiling with closed eyes. “The simplest way to assemble the correct digital root with multiple bracelets is to use the bracelet number that matches the door, then add to it bracelets that have a digital root of [9] together. For instance, if the door is [5], we could send through the person with bracelet [5], plus [1] and [8], and plus [2] and [7].”

Hideyoshi nodded quicker and quicker with each line Light spoke. He, too, was a friend of numbers, but less experienced with them than Light by virtue of years. He drank in Light’s deductions with a hungry smile.

“Wait, how come you can just add [9] like that?” Nobu asked. “I… I don’t get it.”

“What is the digital root of [5]?” Light asked.

“Just… [5], right?” Nobu said warily.

“And what is the digital root of [5 + 9]?” added Light.

“That’s [14]… so you do [1+4]… and that’s [5]. Oh!”

“Add another [9], if you’d like.”

“Okay, [14 + 9]… [23]?” he said, scrunching up his round face. “So [2+3]… oh, weird.”

“So that was [5], [1], [8], [2], and [7] going through door [5]?” Yuuki repeated to clarify. “But what about the rest of us? Can we go through door [4]? That’s… I’m [6], and then…”

“[3] and [6], which make [9], and then bracelet [9], so that all evens out,” Hideyoshi said with excitement, the little stammer gone from his voice, “and then you add bracelet [4] and you get [4]!”

She shuddered a little bit as he spoke, as if she were seeing something she did not like.

“Then let’s get going, right?” Nobu said, clenching his big fist with a determined smile.

Aoi shuddered too, for a different reason. He had not liked the sight of the [4] and [5] doors next to one another. In the face of Light’s proposed mathematics, he liked it even less. He did not want to be separated from Akane, especially not when she was in one of those semi-present states.

“Wait!”

Aoi jumped to hear his little sister’s voice. Her wide eyes were locked onto the number [4] door, to which she pointed with a shaking finger.

“I have to go in that door,” she stated.

“What? Why?” Hideyoshi complained. “You’re—you’re—you’re messing up the plan!”

“My… my brother’s going through door [4].” It was not a lie, until she added, “In Building Q.”

Light narrowed his eyes. “Is that so,” he murmured. “Then let’s figure out something else.”

“What do you mean, your brother’s going through that door?” Yuuki demanded. “How do you know that?”

“I just know,” Akane said softly.

“Could you remind me of your bracelet number?” asked Light.

She was not looking at him, but her next move betrayed how very _unaware_ of him she was. Despite how far she stood from Light, she lifted her left hand up, much too far for him to read. She held her right near her mouth, a knuckle near her lips. She was going to start sucking on it. She used to do that all the time when she was deep in thought.

“She’s [5],” said Nona.

“Let’s make a swap, then,” Light proposed. “I have bracelet [1], so she and I together make [6]. Therefore, bracelet [6] will go through door [5] instead, and the two of us will go through door [4]. Is this satisfactory?”

Akane positively glowed with a smile. Yuuki, the owner of bracelet [6], shrugged and gave a strange glare at Hideyoshi, with whom she would no longer be traveling.

“That does leave our friend with bracelet [9] with a choice,” said Light. “We currently have bracelets [2], [6], [7], and [8] for door [5], and [1], [3], [4] and [5] for door [4]. Bracelet [9] could pick either side.”

They turned to the redheaded girl fiddling with the clasps on her overalls, who took a moment to notice their gaze. Her brown eyes went wide with terror.

“You’re Claire, right?” asked Nona. “What door do you wanna go through?”

Claire only stared in response.

“Hel- _lo_?” Yuuki waved her hand wildly at Claire, trying to get her attention. Her nose scrunched up with impatience. “Can’t you say anything?”

“Maybe—maybe—maybe she can’t,” said Hideyoshi. “Maybe she’s—she’s—she’s—she’s—she’s—”

“Deaf?” Nobu guessed when Hideyoshi could not get his last words out.

Yuuki clapped her hands loudly. When Claire jumped at the noise, Yuuki rolled her eyes.

“Are you a fuckin’ idiot?” Aoi groaned, shoving Yuuki out of the way. “She’s _white_. It’s probably—”

He glanced upwards, bringing himself into the state of mind of the States. It had been so long since he used the phrases his parents had taught them. He had learned this one before he was old enough for school.

“<Do you speak English?>”

The fear vanished from every bone in Claire’s body. Her knocking knees straightened out, her hunched shoulders settled, and her face spread into a grin. “<Yeah!>”

“See? Fuckin’ morons.” Aoi shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to remember more. “<O-kay. You must... You choose the door. Four, and five. See?>” He pointed between the doors. “<Four or five?>”

“<You haven’t understood anything that’s going on here, have you?>” said Light in perfect American English.

“Wait, what the hell?” Aoi uttered.

“Please, Aoi. I’m _white_.” Light smirked at him. “ <Claire, allow me to explain. We have to split up into two groups and go through each of these doors. You can pick whichever door you’d like. Would you like to go through door [4], or door [5]? I will be going through door [4], if you’d like to stay with someone who speaks English.>”

“<Oh!>” said Claire. Her eyes settled on door [5]. “<Naw, I… I wanna go through door [5]. Can I go through door [5]?>”

Light picked up on an Australian accent in her small, bright voice. “<Really?>” he murmured. “<Can I ask why?>”

“<My sister’s gonna go in door [5],>” Claire said. “<My sister Holly.>”

The pieces continued to fall into place. Light was sure that his little sister was wearing bracelet [9] over in the other test facility, not bracelet [1] as Hongou had claimed. Someone named Holly was at that site, wearing that bracelet [1]. Their bracelets had been switched.

“<As you wish, then,>” said Light. He turned back towards the doors. “Claire would like to go through door [5].”

Aoi had only understood every few words, and fewer still through Claire’s unfamiliar accent. He was sure he had misheard the <five>’s coming from her mouth, until Light gave the translation to confirm it. “But ain’t you goin’ in door [4]?” he pointed out.

“Yes, we had this conversation,” Light sighed. “Does anyone else want to make any changes or shall we focus on trying to escape this ship before it sinks?”

He was met with silence, which he took as consensus. In truth, the one who wanted to make changes was Light himself, but he wanted to make changes on the side of the experiment that he could not control.

_Although Reed was not the oldest child in the group, by a number of years—he looked around ten or eleven, while the girl with bracelet [2], Aiko, could have been in high school—he spoke as if to take command. His Japanese was tinged with an American accent that matched with his auburn hair and white skin, and maybe his strange eyes. His words were firm, but not forceful. Something about the way he spoke, or his subtle gestures, or whatever it was—something made him and his ideas compelling._

_His door combinations partnered all of the English-speakers with someone bilingual in Japanese and English. He paired up himself with the girl wearing bracelet [4], a small, white-haired girl with a constant scowl. The man over the speaker, Nijisaki, had called her a Japanese name, Akane, but she had the same Caucasian face as Reed—eerily similar, in fact. As Reed was giving his suggestions for door combinations, he called her Violet, then just Vi._

_He, with bracelet [5], and Vi with bracelet [4], would go through door [4] with Aiko, Sachiko, and Ennea, who wore bracelets [2], [3], and [8]. This way, Holly, the Australian girl with the elegant face and pale blonde hair wearing bracelet [1], could go through door [5] with Clover, who wore bracelet [9] and had been picking up Japanese almost as quickly as her older brother. She knew he was there with her now, watching over her as he always did, but she wished she could watch over him, too._

Despite wearing bracelet [9], Clover did not have the freedom to jump between doors at will in this configuration without exceeding the group capacity. She could not join Light telepathically through door [4]. He wanted her to ask bracelets [4] and [5] to trade places with her, to somehow rearrange things to take her inside the same door as him so that he could hide his blindness for a little bit longer, but there was a funny thing he had always known about their psychic connection: it only went one way.

She did not know which door he was going through. She did not know how much it would help him to make that swap.

Of course, he could have made a swap, himself, and he thought about it while the other children analyzed the scanner panels beside the doors and figured out how to operate them. He could have asked bracelets [2] and [8] to swap with him, making a perfect match between the events in Building Q and on this ship. He would be able to see the complete puzzles through Clover’s eyes and pass on his knowledge to his partners. But there was a mystery surrounding bracelets [4] and [5], and he wanted to solve that more than any puzzle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys don’t mind but I’m gonna meme on you about all the thought I put into the names under the illusion that I’m providing you with a helpful character guide about the new friends.
> 
> Holly ([1] in Building Q) and Claire ([9] on the Gigantic) are sisters who have been mixed up a bit with Clover ([9] in Building Q) and Light ([1] on the Gigantic). If you remember from the pictures, Claire was the little pinkish-haired girl on the Gigantic. I remember when I first saw her, my impression was that she was young Clover (until I remembered the story better), so it seems likely that they could have been mistaken for sisters and given matching bracelets. Holly’s name comes from a four-leafed plant. Claire means “light” in French.
> 
> The sibling pair in Building Q that have been grouped together like Aoi and Akane (bracelets [4] and [5]) also match their naming conventions. The words aoi and akane mean blue and red, but the names Aoi and Akane are written with the kanji for the plants hollyhock and Rubia cordifolia. In the same way, Violet and Reed can also be interpreted as either a plant and a type of grass, or as the colors blue(ish purple) and red (the name Reed is actually derived from the color). Also for the VLR/ZTD readers **[spoilers]** yes you are not mistaken I am screwing with you. Remember when Phi’s VLR art came out the first time and we were all like ????? RELATED TO SANTA???? I always kind of thought it would be funny if she was involved in the first Nonary Game as the girl sent to Building Q by mistake because they both had white hair. Why the different names? Well 1) no spoilers for the 999-only readers and 2) clearly the real Phi didn’t actually play the first Nonary Game so it’s probably weird clone nonsense. Although I’m pretty proud of the Vi/Phi thing. **[/spoilers]**
> 
> The remaining sibling pairs all have name meanings based on hope, faith, love, and luck!! Yuuki and her brother Hideki (6) are hope. Nobu and his brother Kenshin (7) I think are technically “trust” instead of faith, but hey close enough I tried. Ren and his sister Aiko (2) are love. And Hideyoshi and his sister Sachiko (3) are luck! According to Google anyway. Otherwise, whatever, they’re good names.
> 
> And you might be able to guess why Akane got sick, but if you didn’t, it’s because Junpei just discovered the 9th Man’s body.


	3. Door [4]

“Don’t tell them anything,” I warned, but she was in one of those places where I wasn’t sure she could really hear me.

I was really fifteen now, at least, so that was one less lie for her to remember. There were no more under-the-table paychecks or truancy claims to fight off, but I was still too young to be her guardian. My boss from my first job saved our hides at least three times by pretending we’d been living in his house all these years since the accident. He wasn’t so keen on helping out ever since I got to legal working age and took another job that paid a legal wage to match. He was a petty man. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind he was the reason we were getting a visit from local government officials investigating child abuse and neglect.

I was stuck in a painfully quiet lobby, the kind where any time there is a conversation, your ears are dying for something to listen to, but the topic is always something brainless or depressing, or both. The clock let forty-five minutes go by without any sight of Akane. My shift started in an hour. I watched the needle of the second hand make its way around the circle again, and again, and again.

I kept seeing the same man flitting through the office. He had a warm magnetism to him, some kind of charm in the way his hair ran wild even though he dressed himself in a tailored suit. All eyes in the room came to him when he entered. I remember thinking he must have been the boss, but he asked the receptionist an awful lot of questions for someone that important.

“Hello, there. Are you Aoi Kurashiki?”

I wouldn’t have believed he was speaking to me if he hadn’t said my name. His eyes didn’t really meet mine as he spoke. They were fixated on my hair at first, then ran down my clothes. I tended to grab people’s attention with white hair and whatever I passed off  as an outfit, but fuck it, if my life is gonna be this shitty, then I deserve to look however the hell I want.

When he introduced himself, I found out he was _a_ boss, but not the boss of this place. He was the CEO of some kind of medical group that owned a few hospitals. He was trying to start a campaign to help orphans and underprivileged kids get healthcare by connecting them with safe medical experiments that could pay their volunteers with free pediatric care. As a result, he said, he came by this office a lot.

“I’m healthy,” I said with a shrug, shifting away from the man. He had seated himself next to me and leaned a little too close for comfort, even if he was just trying to be friendly.

“Listen, Aoi,” said the man in a low voice, “the people here are concerned because your sister isn’t up to date on her vaccines. If you—”

“Can’t we opt out? Like in America. They’re fulla chemicals or whatever.”

When he grabbed my arm under the shoulder and squeezed, I decided I didn’t like him. I didn’t hate him or anything, not yet, I just thought he was kind of irritating.

“Just say the word, and I can get you and your sister out of this place in the next five minutes,” he said, almost pleading. “Say you’ll join our program.”

I looked at the clock counting down the time to my next shift, and then I made the worst mistake of my entire life. I shrugged and said, “Fine.”

He had a waiver for me to read and sign. I’d take his psychology experiments over having my sister thrown into an institution any day. I signed it while looking him straight in the eye. He just gave my flourishing pen a giddy grin.

Then, on the day of the study, after we had both suffered through about three different shots each, we met the whole bad haircut team—Hongou with his flying all over the place, the sinister-looking man who’d let his grow down to his shoulders, and the tiny guy with a bird’s nest who was stuttering out procedure instructions that were starting to make me nervous. I gave Akane a look. It was all I could give her, a look that said _Don’t tell them anything_.

She could give me much more than that. She could give me everything.

I laid there in the reclined chair, my ears itching under the noise-cancelling headphones playing soft static, my eyes pressed closed under what looked like the two halves of a ping-pong ball. I was gonna go crazy if I kept thinking about everything I was thinking about, so I did what the guy told me. I breathed slowly until I couldn’t remember I was breathing anymore, and I tried to imagine myself floating.

I could feel more from her than ever before.

_“I’d like you to concentrate on this object, please, Akane,” said the man in the pinstripe suit with the wild hair, handing her a small figurine of a rabbit._

_“Oh,” she murmured._

_She had remembered feeling uneasy as she made her way to the hutch that day, as if everything around her seemed to be staring at her, waiting for something. At the moment her hand touched the knob on the door, she saw the spot of blood seeping into the ground right under the doorway._

_She wished she had not opened it, she knew she should not open it, but morbid curiosity compelled her. The lumpy forms of all of their small, fuzzy bodies, matted with dirt and blood, were scattered across the hay._

_She slammed the door shut. She did not know what else to do but cry._

“I… I dunno,” I mumbled, lip quivering a little. I was supposed to be saying everything that came to mind. “I don’t see anything.”

I wasn’t a sap like her, crying over a bunch of dead animals. I ate rabbit meat once. I liked it. I was just so attached to her in this moment, like I almost _was_ her, like everything her eyes and ears and fingers and even her mind were feeling, it was all getting wired back to me, like attaching a second monitor to a computer. We were copies of each other.

_“My brother’s not going to say anything even if I tell him there’s a rabbit,” Akane murmured._

I didn’t flinch too bad, just enough that I was aware of the recliner underneath me again. Now the weird ping-pong goggles were starting to itch, too. I also lost that intense connection to Akane.

“Maybe snow,” I said. “Or maybe that’s just ’cuz I’m lookin’ at ping-pong balls. I was also thinkin’ clouds, or milk.”

I couldn’t even hear her for the next ten minutes. My hands dug into the armrests of the chairs. I think my face stayed scrunched up the entire time. With any luck, they thought I was just trying to concentrate on the psychic vibes, instead of just frantically hoping Akane wasn’t running her mouth in the other room, not to mention trying to endure the itching around my ears and my eyes. Then—

_“Shut up! Shut your mouth, you stupid little girl!”_

_Akane snapped her eyes open. His face was wild with rage, but behind it, she saw shame._

_“You don’t understand! You don’t understand a thing!”_

_He grabbed her arm and shook it, lips pulled so far back into a grimace that she could see his gums. Though her heart pounded in her little chest, like her body was telling her she should be afraid, her resolve remained solid. She met his frenzied eyes with determination._

_“This research will revolutionize the world as we know it!” he yelled. “You don’t understand what it’s like to live like this, you fucking—”_

_“You’ll only bring about the end of the world,” she said with serenity. “So I will bring about the end of you, even if it kills me a hundred times.”_

_He wrenched her arm up in the air. Her feet left the ground. Then she hit the wall._

“You _motherfucker_!” I screamed. “Don’t fucking _touch_ her!”

I couldn’t even move until that moment, when my body got so hot with anger that I could finally feel it instead of just feeling Akane. I don’t think I was all there even when I jumped out of the chair, because I don’t remember clawing the ping-pong mask or the headphones from my face, but somehow I was seeing the locked doorknob not moving when I pulled on it with both hands, and I was hearing a man telling me to sit back down and resume the experiment. I kind of remember screaming at him. I definitely remember shoving him away when he tried to grab my arms.

Then the door opened. The stutterer with the bushy hair and now off-kilter glasses was grinning like a giddy madman, clutching a fistful of papers.

“Th-this is it!” he exclaimed. “It worked! W-we’ve got it! This is what we were looking for!”

I knew it wouldn’t be over after we left. I expected letters inviting us to more studies, maybe blackmail to force us into it. I didn’t expect this.

 

* * *

 

Akane was the first to press her hand to the scanner panel on the device next to the door. It was the obvious first guess for how to interact with the doors, but she moved with confidence, as if she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was right.

Aoi was close behind Akane, and Light very close behind Aoi. The other boy moved his hand in wide circles around the scanner panel, frowning, until he heard the beep telling him his number had been included.

“So it’s only based on proximity, then?” Light wondered, shoving his hand back into his pocket. “There’s no reason it would need to scan our hands, after all.”

Hideyoshi confirmed Light’s suspicions by keeping his hand clenched in a fist and waving it near the panel, which he could barely reach. All four required numbers were registered in the device.

“Now what?” asked Hideyoshi. “Isn’t—isn’t that—isn’t that the right digital root? Shouldn’t it be—shouldn’t it be opening?”

Akane pulled the lever on the right side of the panel. Again, an obvious first guess, but again, she moved with too much confidence for it to be a mere guess on her part.

The double doors groaned as they swung open. Light caught the edge of the one coming towards him in his hand and slid himself around it to walk inside, frowning at the gentle chirp he heard from their bracelets, once per second. Aoi pulled Akane away from the panel and through the door.

“Good—good luck,” stuttered Hideyoshi, waving a trembling hand at the other kids.

The doors almost slammed shut with him on the other side. Aoi’s ears rang with the sound of nine children screaming—himself included—well after he yanked Hideyoshi across the threshold and into the dim hallway beyond.

“Does anyone know why our bracelets are… ticking?” asked Light uncertainly, holding his left wrist to his ear.

Aoi glanced at his wrist and saw that Light had neglected to mention the red skull currently overlaying his bracelet number. The sound and the imagery made it painfully clear what was happening, or what would happen if they did not hurry.

“The—the—the—the _bomb_?!” Hideyoshi shrieked. “But—but—but we did it right! We did the—the digital root!”

“There’s another scanner on this side of the door. Gentarou Hongou said that.” Light’s knees were bent, ready to spring into action. “Does—does anyone see…”

“Where?! It’s not—it’s not here!” the little boy cried.

“This way!” called Akane, racing down the hallway.

Aoi would have run after her if he had not felt a weak touch on his shoulder that turned into a hand grabbing hold of his jacket. While Hideyoshi scurried away, Aoi stood still.

“Show me where the scanner is,” Light finally uttered. “I am blind.”

He felt like he had been punched in the gut so hard that the hand went inside his chest and reached up to grab his heart, squeezing and twisting mercilessly. He looked over his shoulder and saw, behind Light’s shaggy locks of hair, his open eyes were cloudy and unfocused. Aoi gritted his teeth and yanked on Light’s shoulder as he broke into a sprint.

They caught up with Hideyoshi before they reached the end of the hallway, where Akane pressed her little hand onto the blue scanner panel. Hideyoshi jumped up and slapped it, obscuring the sound of the beep. Aoi got himself and Light in almost simultaneously when he grabbed Light’s left hand with his own left hand and slammed them down together.

His stomach dropped. He forgot to pull the lever beside the device; Hideyoshi had to jump in and do it for him. The beeping on the bracelets stopped and the skulls vanished, but he could not even feel relief. Light’s left hand was shiny, hard, and near weightless, like plastic.

“So we’re—so we’re safe?” Hideyoshi asked.

“From the present danger, certainly.” Light smiled weakly, closing his blind eyes.

“Oh—oh… yeah.” Hideyoshi squirmed, looking at all of the doors they had passed on their way to the end of the hallway. “So… what—what—what now?”

“We have to solve a puzzle,” said Akane with a confident nod.

She found an unlocked door on her first try. Hideyoshi tried the door at the very end of the hall, but it was locked, so he followed Akane. Only Aoi and Light remained in the hallway, one boy staring at the other in awe and terror.

“What the fuck?” he breathed. “What the _fuck_?”

“Are you planning to let go of my hand?”

Aoi snatched his hand away from Light’s plastic wrist. Just as quickly and forcefully, Light stuffed his left hand back into his pocket.

“Why the fuck didn’t you _say_ anything?!” Aoi’s voice cracked under the pressure of his volume and his anxiety. “We don’t know where we are, and someone’s tryna fuckin’ _kill_ all of us, and you’re—you’re—”

“Just as capable of living and dying as the rest of you.” Light’s face hardened into a grimace before it turned away. “You have other things to worry about, Aoi.”

“Don’t underestimate how much I can worry about,” Aoi grumbled.

Light had heard him, but not listened. With his only feeling hand, he started to follow the wall towards the sound of Hideyoshi’s voice. Aoi grabbed his shoulder before he made it to the door.

“Look, I get it, you don’t want help, you can make it fine on your own,” Aoi said. “I’m the same way, okay? I _get_ it. But this is… this is different. This ain’t fair. If… if you need… You’re not a wimp if you ask for help, okay? If you… This ain’t fair. This is _crazy_.”

He could not find the words he really wanted to say without sounding too soft, especially right after Light nailed him for holding his hand. By the small smile creeping onto his face, Light seemed to understand.

“I’m afraid my ability to assist _will_ be hindered from now on,” he quietly sighed. “My sister has gone through door [5], so I no longer have any information about my surroundings.”

Aoi blinked. “Wait, what the hell?” he asked. “What do you mean, she—what’s that got to do with anything?”

“I get the feeling that you might understand this, Aoi,” he said. “The same reason you knew your sister was behind door [5] in the lower deck… that’s the same reason I was able to ‘see’ my surroundings.”

Light had deduced the purpose and theory behind the experiment into which these children were forced. In this moment, it became clear to Aoi, as well.

“Our puzzles are incomplete,” he recalled. “They’re supposed to _send_ us the missing pieces.”

“Yes, which means you’re a bit out of luck, aren’t you?” Light said with a slippery smile as he slid through the doorway. “I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine.”

Aoi’s heart rattled in his chest. Without turning his knowing smile away, Light moved aside with perfect, fluid ease when Akane came barreling out of the room again in laser focus, followed by a curious Hideyoshi. She opened the door to the opposite room in the hallway.

“Oh, no,” Hideyoshi moaned, peering down the hall. “Do we have to look through _all_ of these?”

“No, these are the only two that are unlocked,” she replied.

Light’s smug grin fell away as his hypothesis fell to pieces. “How?” he wondered. “If she… Where is she getting that information?”

“From her brother, I guess, right?” Aoi said, suppressing a smug grin of his own.

Light gave him a look and an exasperated sigh. If he was going to gloat about like he had all of the answers all of the time, Aoi was not going to pass up the chance to mess with him.

Before Hideyoshi found any clues, he discovered a vent pouring out warm air. He slipped off his shoes and peeled off his wet socks to lay beside the heat, eagerly suggesting that the other boys do the same. His stutter had died down a bit now that the danger was out of sight and they found themselves in the comfortable atmosphere of an old-fashioned hotel room.

Light slipped off his boots with one hand, leaning a fake arm against the wall for balance. The instinct to ask if he needed help was strong. Aoi fought it back, especially when he noticed that he, too, was only using one hand to accomplish the same sort of task. He did not hold back from offering to put Light’s shoes and socks in front of the vent that he surely could not see, but Light responded by gathering the items in his arms and placing them in exactly correct spot, without even touching the wall.

“You been blind your whole life?” Aoi asked quietly, dropping his own wet belongings.

“No,” he sighed. “A few years now.”

“No shit. You… I dunno, you move around like it’s nothin’, y’know?”

“Most people do.”

“Most people ain’t _blind_.”

“Most people don’t like being marveled at like some kind of circus animal for adequately performing everyday tasks.” Light’s lips twitched into a scowl in the space between his words. “Do you intend to make yourself as useless as me or are you going to help the other two with the puzzle?”

Aoi rolled his eyes, shifting pillows and bedsheets in search of clues. “You’re not useless,” he grumbled. “Go follow the little tykes around. Maybe they’ll need your stupid math powers.”

“Remind me of their names?”

Aoi thought it was a trick. “Violet and Hideyoshi, I think,” he responded.

“Hideyoshi. Bracelet [3],” Light murmured, nodding as he stowed the information away. “Thank you, Aoi.”

Aoi flinched at the sound of his name, though Light had already said it many times. Perhaps that made it even stranger. “Why d’you know my name and not them?”

“Did you know you were the only person to speak when introduced?” Light replied. “What an unfortunate circumstance that was for both of us, that you became the only person in the room I could recognize. Had you not spoken out, I likely would not have chosen you to be my confidant.”

Light ran his fingers lightly along the wall, his bare feet gliding across the floor. Aoi stared after the door he left through, then at the empty bedroom before him.

Just past the doorway to the other room was an unfinished piece of abstract art. They quickly found two tiles that looked like they would fit in, but a third was needed to complete the inscrutable image. An excruciating length of time ticked by with no further clues. Their socks and shoes were dry. They scooted the articles out of the way, huddling with their knees near the vent to dry their pants and brainstorm. Light, with his denim jeans damp past his knees, sat closest to the heat. Hideyoshi’s shorts had almost dried out on their own; he sat at the edge of the bed behind them at intervals, shuffling the tiles in his hands. Akane, whose skirt had never touched the water, kept scouring the room as they spoke. She had lost her faraway look and returned to being a normal girl, a scared twelve-year-old trying to make sense of the mysteries around her.

“I’m gonna go check the other room again,” Aoi muttered as he hopped to his feet despite his still-damp pants. He gave a jerk of a nod to Akane when he caught her eye.

In the adjacent room, he gazed absently at the glass china cabinet, which they had unlocked to find one tile, until he heard the door open again behind him. Akane wandered in, eyes wide. After another nod, he retreated into the bedroom of the cabin, the one shrouded in darkness. He heard Akane’s footsteps follow him.

Under the cover of shadow, he buried her in his arms with a breathless, “Hey, you okay?”

She gave a little gasp before squeezing him back so hard her arms started shaking. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she whispered.

“Yeah, me neither,” he sighed. “But I don’t think you’re s’posed to be here. Not on this ship. Nobody else’s siblings are here.”

Her fingers curled into the fabric on his back. “You’re pretending you don’t know me,” she murmured.

“Just until I figure out what’s really goin’ on here. I don’t wanna draw any attention to you, alright?” he said. “I wanna keep you safe.”

“Keep me safe,” she repeated softly. Her weight shifted closer to him, leaning into his chest.

“Yeah, I’ll keep you safe. Promise.” He tucked her head under his chin. “I might not talk to you when the other kids are around, but I’ll never leave you alone. I’ll make some excuse to make sure we always go the same way, alright?”

 “Oh… the new shoes!”

He blinked. “New shoes?”

“ _That’s_ why you said that.” She giggled. “You didn’t want to seem like a wuss, but you wanted to go through door [4] and you couldn’t say why. You’re so silly, Aoi.”

She slipped out of his embrace, still giggling, and bounded off to the lighter part of the room without any further explanation.

When Aoi returned without her to the warm vent in the other room, he found that neither Light nor Hideyoshi had moved—Light from the vent, Hideyoshi from the bed where he fiddled with the tiles—but Light had an urgent look on his face. His right hand was stuffed inside the breast of his jacket.

 “What’s up?” Aoi asked as he dropped back to the ground.

Light shook his head. His hand stayed put.

Eventually, Hideyoshi rested the tiles back on the bed and got up to look around the other room with Akane. As soon as he was far enough away, Light finally pulled his hand back out with what looked like a handful of grass at first glance. “Are they crushed?” he whispered.

He opened his hand, and Aoi saw the petals of more four-leaf clovers than he had seen in his whole life. “The hell is that?” he asked.

Light’s hand flinched back. He lifted up his left hand, the prosthetic, and sprinkled the clovers into its lifeless palm. “They all have four, right?” he mumbled, running his fingers around the edges. “And there are… good, still nine. But do they look crushed?”

“N-no, they’re fine, but why the hell d’you have all these—”

Light heard Hideyoshi’s plodding footsteps drawing nearer before Aoi saw him round the corner. In a blink, the clovers were gone, back into the inner pocket of Light’s jacket.

“I don’t get it,” Hideyoshi whined as he stomped back to the bed, where he picked up the two tiles again. “We—we—we’ve looked everywhere.”

“Are we missing a tile because the puzzle’s not supposed to be complete? Is that all?” Aoi wondered, scratching his head.

“It’s not likely that physical pieces are missing. We wouldn’t be able to solve the puzzle at all if that were the case,” Light said. “We’re probably lacking a clue that would point us in the right direction to find the missing—”

He jumped at the sound of the tiles clattering to the ground when they slipped out of Hideyoshi’s hands. Behind his thick, round glasses, his eyes were bugged out, shifting about but seeing nothing. His lips twitched without a sound, until his rigid body snapped back to something normal and he muttered, “Third from the right, fifth from the top.”

He scrambled past the boys and towards the door to the hallway, but veered into the bathroom instead. Aoi darted after him, Light on his heels. They found him standing on his toes in the shower, scraping at a tile his little fingers could barely reach. Leaning over him, Aoi touched the tile. He was about to ask what Hideyoshi wanted with it, when it just about fell out of the wall and into his hands. On the other side were those same black and white patterns.

“How the hell’d you know this was here?” Aoi asked. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, however, he knew. He knew that every child on this sinking ship had been subjected to the same test as he and Akane.

“I… I dunno,” Hideyoshi mumbled. “I just… it just came to me. I thought I—I thought I saw…”

Every child on this ship had been subjected to the test, and they had all passed.

With the clues they had gathered, there seemed no other course of action to take but to lay the tiles in the picture frame. Aoi did the honors, as the only person tall enough to easily reach the top of the frame who could also see what he was doing. They physically fit together, but nothing happened when he nudged the last piece in place.

“Maybe—maybe it’s supposed to make a certain picture,” Hideyoshi suggested.

“It’s just a buncha black splotches. What kinda picture’s it supposed to make?” Aoi said. He pried out the piece in the top-left corner, rotated it ninety degrees, and put it back. Nothing happened, and the picture did not look any less abstract.

“Perhaps we’re missing another clue,” Light murmured. “Hideyoshi, do you remember how you figured out where the last tile was?”

Hideyoshi shook his head furiously, his small shoulders shuddering. “I—I—I dunno,” he stammered. “I—I just—I just—I just…”

“You’re the only one of us here who can see the completed puzzle,” Light said. Behind his back, his right hand was clenched into an anxious fist.  “Focus. Focus on the sensations coming to you from somewhere far away.”

The only sensations Hideyoshi could focus on were the cool points of sweat beading across his skin as he trembled, and the itching that followed the goosebumps breaking out on his arms, his legs, maybe even his cheeks, unless that was the cold feeling of blood draining from his face. His throat went dry as air rushed in and out of his mouth faster and faster.

He held his head in his hands and sank to his knocking knees. “I—I—I—I can’t—I can’t—I can’t—can’t—can’t—can’t—can’t—can’t—”

Aoi shot a glare at Light, who had a connection to his sister, who knowingly went into a different door than his sister, leading all four of them to this dead end where they could not put together a handful of tiles to save their own lives. Light, being blind, did not respond to the look.

Stepping past Hideyoshi as if he were invisible, Akane rolled onto her toes to reach the painting and carefully gather the tiles. Rather than lay them out together, she looked at each piece one at a time, rotating it until she seemed to recognize it, and laid it in its proper place in the picture frame.  The splotches ran together across the tiles, making some kind of shape. With a  click and a whir, the picture frame itself told Akane she had found the correct answer when it slid out from the wall and down, revealing a deep recess.

“What—what—what _is_ that?” Hideyoshi asked.

From his higher vantage point, Aoi could see the gleam of the key inside the hollow. “It’s our way outta this place,” he said, snatching the key up. The symbol on the head matched the symbol on the lock in the hall.

“No—no—no—no… I mean…” Hideyoshi stumbled to his feet and pointed not at the hole in the wall, but at the picture frame that had covered it. “What’s—what’s that, anyway?”

Akane was still facing the wall after finishing the puzzle. Only Aoi, standing beside her to pick up the key, could see the devilish grin creeping up on her face.

“It’s a funyarinpa,” she said.

“A _what_?” Aoi demanded.

“What’s a—a—a—a funyarinpa?” asked Hideyoshi.

She covered her mouth as she gave a demure giggle. “You mean… you don’t know?”

With that, she plucked the key from Aoi’s unsuspecting hand and slipped back into the hallway.

They solved the puzzle in the kitchen slowly, but by their own wits for the most part. Hideyoshi’s stomach growled as Aoi flipped the steak on the hot stovetop. He kept a careful eye on the scrap of paper sticking out of the thawing meat. “It smells off,” Aoi warned when he noticed Hideyoshi staring. “Mighta gone bad or something. We’ll get outta here and eat somethin’ soon.”

There was no clue present to tell them how to interpret the letters and numbers scrawled onto the paper stained red with cow’s blood. If Hideyoshi were able to focus, he might have seen it, or Akane might have found the knowledge after going into one of her trances. As it was, it took ages before Light suggested substituting hexadecimal values. It must have taken a while, because when Hideyoshi finally punched in the right code, revealing the key to unlock the door, they heard a familiar chime.

Aoi jumped at the sound. “Jesus, how is that still so loud all the way back here?”

Light hushed him with a finger pressed to his lips. “Count,” he said.

Aoi lost track of the number, but the sounds of the great clock seemed to go on forever. He could feel chills sliding down his back as each chime passed through his body. Then, finally, it was over.

“Eleven,” whispered Hideyoshi.

“This doesn’t bode well,” Light uttered, holding his chin in his hand. “We can’t spend more than two hours on two doors. If there’s a door for every number, then we have one hour per door. And it’s not likely these puzzles will get any easier as we go on.”

“You—you—you think—you think they’ll get—they’ll get harder?” Hideyoshi squeaked.

Aoi snatched the keycard out of Hideyoshi’s tight grip and raced towards the door. He thought he heard footsteps following him, but even if he had not, he would not have looked back or hesitated for a moment, maybe not even for Akane. This was the moment he felt—they all felt—the icy grip of death on their shoulders, waiting patiently for the time to reap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: they're just kids, i'm not gonna ship them, i'll just make them be good friends  
> also me: has not written a single fic involving even just one of these characters without finding a way to tie in this ship
> 
> it was inevitable and i don't know why i tried to fight it


	4. Door [5]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy birthday akane, for your present, here is your very own first-person segment of a chapter *blows kisses*

My brother always said I was different from most girls my age, but that’s why he loved me so much. I could see it in his eyes that he meant it, every word. He was the first person I told about the things I knew.

“It’s like, sometimes, when I make a decision, I can feel all the ways it’ll turn out if I choose one way or the other,” I explained.

“Yeah, you got good judgment,” he agreed.

“But then, when I choose something, everything happens exactly like I thought it would,” I protested. “Everything, exactly.”

“Everything exactly?” he repeated with a smile, tousling my hair.

I knew he didn’t understand what I meant. I wanted to show him what I meant, to have him feel exactly what I was feeling. There was a kind of _place_ I was getting all of this information from, I could tell—a place somehow far beyond this world, a place that felt a little like a river, but instead of water, it flowed with eight billion tiny realities, tangling up and interacting and splitting into eight billion more realities at those decision points. I could not see it, but I could feel it. I felt the presence of my past and future selves simultaneously, feeling out the shape of life in the places where my essence branched apart in the many possible futures.

My brother was in there, one of those eight billion people who could feel only his immediate surroundings. I wanted to connect him to myself, to my life and lives reaching across the scope of the next sixty-odd years in this universe. I was drawn to him like a magnet, honing in on the blue light of his soul. All I had to do was _touch_ him.

Do you feel what I feel?

His eyes got a little cloudy as he received my thoughts for the first time. When he came back from space, he told me, “You’re really special, Akane,” in a soft voice like he was having trouble speaking.

We made some rules. I wasn’t allowed to do anything like that to anybody else and I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody about it, unless I asked him first. He said he didn’t want to keep me in a cage like that, but he wanted to keep me safe. I understood the kind of people he was trying to keep me safe from when I sat in a room with Gentarou Hongou for the first time.

Every gentle word that Hongou said, every soft smile he gave, made my head ring with cognitive dissonance. He seemed so warm, if a bit awkward around children, yet my heart pounded every time I looked at him, a visceral reaction of terror.

There was something else that I noticed about him, something I had only felt once before, when I first met Junpei. It was like I could feel that he was close to me in that river of consciousness, not just now, but all the way down the river, down all of the different branches. I felt that my path and his were inextricably linked, for better or for worse.

Jumpy was exciting to meet. He was a ray of sunshine, with a smile that made me feel safe. When I understood that we would walk many paths down the river of time together, I felt this rush of joy as though I had found the meaning of my life.

Finding my meaning was different from finding my purpose. When I met Hongou, I felt like I had found my purpose.

“Have you told your brother things before?” he asked as I turned the rabbit figurine over in my hands, running my fingers along the textured plastic. “When you were far away from him, could you tell him things with your mind?”

Aoi would not want me to tell him anything about our connection. He probably wouldn’t want me to talk about anything I was about to say next, but my infinite positions in the river of time were communicating with me, glowing, showing me glimpses of things I could only say, but not yet understand.

“You won’t learn anything by studying me,” I said.

He blinked, startled.

“Well, maybe you might learn something. But you could do all the research in the world,” I said, “and you’ll never be able to do what I can do.”

“What is it you can do that I can’t, little girl?” he asked in a poorly controlled voice. Something was burning angry behind him, angry with desperation and a painful longing.

I felt the field of humanity around me even stronger than ever. I felt a sudden warmth from one of my selves of the future, placing a hand on my shoulder and telling me that my vitriol was righteous.

“I can know everything. I can feel it all happening,” I said. “Everyone in the world is united together in a place you can’t see. You’re trying so hard to see it, and maybe it’s right there in front of your eyes, but you just can’t _recognize_ it.”

His face gave a twitch of horror, as though I had struck a terrible nerve.

“You’re desperate,” I knew. “You’ll do anything it takes to see what I can see. You’ll hurt people if you have to, won’t you? You’ll hurt _me_.”

“Of—of course not,” he stammered, trying to force a smile. It looked like the one he had worn out in the hallway before the experiment started. It was fake. It had always been fake.

I shook my head. “You _will_ , Mr. Hongou. You will hurt me.”

When I closed my eyes, I felt fire in my bones, flashes of a painful death. I felt a branch in the river splitting half a dozen different ways, and I could not feel my soul passing through them. No—I passed through _one_ of those rivers, because the woman holding my hand through that terrible vision was _me_ , my older self, the lone survivor of my many possible destinies. In every other branch, I no longer existed. At the sudden ends of those branches, I felt the man who snuffed me out.

“More than likely, you’re going to kill me,” I stated. “You’ll put me in danger over and over, just because you think it will help you get closer to something you can never touch. I won’t forget that, Mr. Hongou. You’re a very selfish man.”

Nothing I was saying scared me. It did not feel real. All of the things I was sensing in that field—vague as those notions were—seemed so strange that I did not know how they could possibly be the real future, let alone my own future.

Then Hongou shot to his feet and grabbed me by the arm, shaking with rage and screaming, and I wondered whether everything I had seen was true.

I did not feel those branching paths in time after that day. I was scared to look for them for a long while. Even when I summoned up the courage, the field did not show itself as clearly as it had when I was alone in a room with a man I knew would be my enemy throughout time. I wondered if, maybe, it meant everything would be alright. Aoi had a job that was paying better now. We had a warmer, cleaner apartment. It was everything we’d ever wanted, but even so, around October, I couldn’t wait for the end of the year.

“Why’s that?” Aoi asked. I don’t remember if I asked him aloud. I don’t think he could always tell the difference between when I spoke and when I touched his soul and showed him my present mind.

“I think I know what I wanna ask Santa for Christmas,” I said.

“Well, you could send him a letter early,” Aoi replied with a little grin. “Most kids only think about him in December, y’know, and he gets swamped with requests. If you let him know now, you’ll lighten his load a little. Give him extra time to work on it. Maybe he’ll be able to get you a bigger present than usual.”

I wrote the letter that night. If Santa could give me what I wanted, he might need all of the time in the world to prepare it.

 

* * *

 

Nona could not concentrate on her surroundings. She ran her eyes over the piano, only for Ren to walk up to it right afterwards and pick up the map of the ship that she had completely missed. She could not help it. She was furious.

_Ennea’s stomach churned as she wandered through the second class cabin, glancing at the décor. She could feel her sister’s rage almost as strongly as she felt her own guilt._

“Why didn’t you tell them to switch?” Nona whispered for the fourth time.

_She slipped into a bathroom and shut the door behind her so that she could mumble in response, “Why didn’t you?”_

There was a bathroom in the first class cabin, as well, which nobody lingered in for too long, because the cloudy water in the bath had the strong stench of brine. Nona stormed into it and hissed, “We went through the doors first! You were supposed to copy us!”

_“We have people here who don’t speak Japanese,” Ennea protested. “We had to be careful how we split up.”_

“We split _ours_ up no problem,” Nona shot back. “You don’t have to speak Japanese to solve these puzzles.”

_Ennea shrugged. “You should’ve swapped out with the boy with bracelet [1].”_

“Don’t _shrug!_ Don’t you get it?! We’re gonna _die_ because you wouldn’t speak up!”

_Ennea had always been the quieter of the twins. They moved as a unit, and Nona was their spokesperson. She had the big ideas. She had the charm, the personality. When they made friends together, it was because of Nona._

“That’s what I’m saying,” Nona said, crossing her arms. “You _never_ speak up. This is _your_ fault.”

_At least they had learned to block each other out._

With that final thought, Ennea faded away into cold emptiness. Nona strained for her, reached out as far as she could, but felt nothing. All had gone quiet in the shared space between their minds.

Someone started the raucous bassline for Heart and Soul on the piano. A timid hand plinked out the melody in the upper register. Yuuki yelled at them to stop messing around and wasting time.

“There’s _no_ clues,” Ren was muttering as he drew near. “There’s _nothing_.”

He and Nona both jumped when he barged into the small bathroom.

“Nothing?” Nona said in a flat voice.

Ren scratched his head, mussing up his already tangled hair, and glanced at the floor. “Maybe we’re just missing something.”

“We’re missing part of the puzzle,” Nona grumbled. She squeezed her eyes shut, looking again for her sister in vain.

“Well, yeah, I get that we’re supposed to be missing part of it,” Ren mumbled, “but we don’t have _anything_. I don’t even know what we’re missing. We’re just locked in this… normal room.”

Like their teammates behind door [4], they crowded around their heat source—in this room, the fireplace—to dry off their clothes. With his cargo shorts completely dry, Nobu left his sneakers and socks behind and kept wandering around. Ren and Yuuki both were too restless to sit still for more than a few minutes at a time, and then they were up and about again, she digging through the bedsheets, he sloshing around the murky bathwater to see if there was something inside.

The foreigner, Claire, had gotten water all the way up to her waist from the flooding in D-Deck. The only time she budged from her spot, or gave any sort of facial expression other than the lost, downcast stare she had been holding since the game began, was when she heard the tinkling of piano keys coming from across the room. She did not know much piano, but she knew more of it than she knew Japanese.

And Nobu knew the piano. Nobu played the Entertainer, and Moonlight Sonata—the exciting third movement, not the gentle first—and this rollicking piece he called The Hut on Fowl’s Legs, or half of it, anyway. His big hands danced up and down the bass keys in raucous chromatic octaves. “My brother plays the treble part,” he said. “We split it up so we could play it. He’s trying to learn to play it by himself. I’ll never get that good, I don’t think.”

Claire’s little hands could barely spread wide enough to play a shaky rendition of Für Elise that trailed off when she could not remember the rest of the notes. Although Nobu tried to help her out by playing the next measure, sitting just a few octaves away from her, she did not pick up where she had left off. She would only join in when he played the bassline of Heart and Soul again.

They had probably played seven repetitions of it, altogether, before Yuuki screamed at them to take their hands off of the piano and never touch it again, so help her God. Ren and Nona were certainly not about to come to the pianists’ defense, so the room stayed quiet.

Thanks to her clear connection with Ennea, Nona had only gotten water up to her ankles. She sat in front of the fireplace long after her shoes and tights had dried, staring listlessly into the flames. Without her sister in the room, she reasoned that she would not be any help, anyway.

She almost noticed—she was aware, but without crafting any thoughts about it—when Yuuki started humming to herself as she walked around. It took a long while before it had gotten repetitive enough to be an earsore.

“What’re you singing?” Ren mumbled, flapping out the damp edges of his jeans in front of the fireplace in an effort to dry them faster.

She groaned and rolled her eyes. “It’s _their_ fault,” she said, giving Nobu and Claire an accusatory glare. “They got that stupid song stuck in my head.”

“You’re not even singing it right,” Nobu whined.

“What? Isn’t that the low part?” she said. As she weakly hummed the notes, she gave levels with her hand to indicate her own pitch: in the middle, then up, then a little step down, then a big leap down.

“No, it goes like…” Nobu raised his hand and inhaled as if about to sing, then shook his head and turned around. “I’ll show you.”

“No, you’re not touching the piano!” Yuuki yelled. “I said no more piano!”

When Claire opened her mouth for the first time since they had passed through the number [5] door, a tone as clear as a bell sang out the notes Yuuki was meaning to hum, and the notes that came after it.

“She’s right, that’s what you were singing,” Ren laughed gently, almost giggling. “That’s the school bell.”

Yuuki flushed bright red at the mistake she had invested so much confidence in believing. She huffed and turned around, about to stomp off, when Nobu asked, “Wait, did you hear it, too?”

She froze. “Hear what?” she asked.

“That! The school bell song,” Nobu said, gesturing at Claire, who blinked in surprise to be the subject of some kind of attention. “I thought I heard it, too, earlier. Did everybody hear it?”

Ren frowned and shook his head. Claire remained clueless. Nona watched Nobu with wide eyes, waiting for him to prove something she had been aching to know for much of her young life.

“I heard the school bell somewhere,” he said, holding his head. “Like it was played on the piano.”

“Is that the answer to the puzzle?” Nona asked. “We gotta play it on the piano and we’ll get out of here?”

“That’s _stupid_ ,” Yuuki scoffed, but Nobu was already marching towards the upright down the hall.

He was quick to find the melody under his fingers, and even quicker to play the sequence. Nothing happened when he finished, so he tried again, slowly, pounding each key with a scowl.

“I told you it wouldn’t work,” Yuuki said, folding her thin arms and tapping her foot impatiently.

Nobu covered his face with his hands and bent his head deep in concentration. “It has to be this,” he said. “I heard it. I _heard_ it.”

“Maybe you’re just hearing things,” Ren said with a shrug.

“I’m—I’m _not!_ ” he said, his suddenly loud voice muffled by his palms. “I _know_ I heard it! My brother was—he was—Kenshin…”

Nona nodded very slowly, fighting to keep her jaw closed. She wanted so badly to tell Ennea that there were other people out there who shared what they shared.

His head snapped up. “He played the wrong keys,” he said. “That’s… why was it playing…?”

He played a sequence of four white keys in a row, then squeezed his eyes shut again.

“He played this, in that order, and it made the bell song,” he said. “Like the keys were all wrong on his piano. Maybe if I just—if I play the _keys_ like that, not the notes—”

He was slow to peck out the notes, and none of it sounded like a recognizable melody, certainly not the school bell tone. Yuuki and Ren had both wandered away from him, ready to give up on that dead end, until they all heard a beeping from the locked door beside the princess bed.

“No way,” Yuuki exhaled, but Nona did not doubt it for a moment. She raced for the door and threw it open.

Claire squealed with delight at the sight and ran through the door while Nona held it ajar. Ren was hot on her tail, and Yuuki, after getting over her dumbfoundedness, was close behind. Nobu took some time to awkwardly scoot out from the piano bench. He took one barefoot step towards the door, glanced down, and then up at Nona with guilt.

“I can hold the door,” she said.

He ran to the fireplace for his shoes, pounding back without putting them on. Nona had to hold out her hand to stop him from barreling past her through the door.

“You heard it from your brother, right?” she whispered. “Like your mind’s connected to him sometimes.”

Nobu gave her a blank look.

“You heard what he was playing on the piano,” she stated. “You _saw_ it.”

His face, already flushed from running around the cabin, grew redder. “That’s crazy,” he mumbled, shifting towards the open door.

“No, it’s _not_ crazy!” Nona insisted. “It’s—I can do it, too, with my sister. I can hear what she’s thinking and I can see what she’s doing if we concentrate. And she can hear me, too. If—if you’re like that, too—and Yuuki heard it, too, and Claire—”

Yuuki’s shrill voice cut her off, echoing from down the hall. “What’s taking you so long?!” she yelled. “Hurry up!”

Nobu hastily escaped the room and the conversation, calling, “Coming!”

They found a pair of metal grates constricting their path. Ren was holding open one of a set of French doors, gesturing through it with a shrug. “It’s the only thing that’ll open,” he said.

“Is there another door on the other side?” Nobu asked. “I mean, can we go through there to get somewhere else?”

Ren peered inside while Claire and Yuuki filed past him. “I can’t tell,” he said. “Anybody see a door in there?”

Like most casinos, the room was not well-lit, making the warm, rich colors of the felt tables and slot machines call their eyes in the dimness. Between the low light and the busy, excited décor of the expansive room, they could not see a door without entering. When they did, they heard a click behind them as the French doors swung shut and locked.

“Ren!” Yuuki shrieked. “Why did you let the door close?!”

Claire flinched at the sound of Yuuki’s raised voice, just as she had when Yuuki yelled at them to stop playing piano. Nona, close as she was, could hear Ren mumbling the beginnings of excuses as he yanked in vain on the door handles. “There wasn’t anywhere else we could… I didn’t know it would…”

“ _Ren!_ ” Yuuki screamed even louder, stomping her feet.

Nona watched the breaking point play out on Claire’s face just before the girl started to cry.

“Stop it!” Yuuki yelled over her shoulder. “I’m not talking to you!”

Nobu lunged to impose himself between Ren, who had mentally given up on opening the doors although his body still pulled at them, and Yuuki. “There’s—there’s gotta be a way out of here!” he insisted, holding up placating hands.

Claire let out a wailing sob that everyone seemed to ignore. Nona glanced at her, then glanced back at the three simultaneously speaking kids at the door, then back at lonely Claire. She sighed and shuffled towards the crying girl. A hand rubbing circles on the back and a soft voice were the same in any language.

“Why are you crying?” she said, since the words did not matter anyway, as long as her tone was soothing. “Yuuki’s right. Nobody’s yelling at you. Nobody’s yelling at anybody. We’re all just mad because we have to be here.”

As she said it, she thought of who had been the object of her own misplaced anger.

She stayed with Claire while the others spread out across the room searching for clues, Yuuki still fuming and Ren still reticent. After they collectively gathered a hand of playing cards, they congregated at a card table in the corner, where Ren scraped his fingers at something on the surface.

“How do we get it out of the glass?” he wondered.

“It’s gotta be we put three cards here,” Nobu said, laying out the three he had collected.

Yuuki picked them up as soon as he put them down. “Not just any three, stupid,” she snapped. “We have to play the game.”

“What game?” Nobu asked.

“Baccarat, duh. It’s the baccarat table.”

“It’s the _what_ table?”

“Ugh, can’t you _read_?” she groaned. “It’s right…”

She blinked in surprise when she found herself pointing at nothing. In a frenzy, she looked around, scrutinizing every inch of the table.

“It was right here!” she protested. “It said _Rules for Baccarat_! Who took it?!”

“Took what?” Nobu asked.

“I didn’t see anything like that,” Ren mumbled.

Claire watched as Nona rose, nodding to herself again. None of this could be a coincidence.

“Did you read it?” Nona called as she jogged over. “The rules. If you still know the rules…”

“No!” Yuuki moaned. “I just—I just _saw_ it, right there… right…”

“Don’t think too hard about it,” Nona coaxed. “Maybe you’ll remember if you don’t try and force it.”

“I didn’t read it! I just _saw_ it!” Yuuki yelled. “I’m not gonna remember anything!”

“You’re gonna make Claire start crying again,” Ren mumbled, turning away from the card table to attend to the girl biting her nails in apprehension.

Yuuki scowled and rolled her eyes. “I can’t deal with all you people,” she grumbled. “This would probably be _easier_ without all of you.”

Nona had all of the same frustrations as Yuuki. The only difference between them was that Yuuki dared to voice her opinions, feelings be damned. Yuuki looked at least a year older than Nona, maybe thirteen or fourteen, but that was all it took for Nona to see coolness instead of coldness. That, and the angle from which the phenomenon was observed: Yuuki had not shown any cruelty to Nona, yet.

Nona ran her fingers along the glass encasing the eight of hearts, then along the indentations in the baccarat table for three more cards. It reminded her of her door down in D-Deck, picking out three cards with Ennea’s help to free them both from their flooding rooms. “Do you think it’s got something to do with digital roots?” she suggested.

“Digital root of [8], huh?” Nobu wondered. “I dunno…”

Through a brief but tedious bout of trial and error, they determined that they did not have the cards handy to advance. It took ages for them to scour the room enough to progress, because no one thought to turn on the lamps on the mantle above the fireplace when the light would not cast strange shadows on the wall. Yuuki got ash or dust or something all over her face when she tried climbing up the fireplace, but that was how they discovered that there was a mysterious mechanical door waiting to be triggered open by their actions somewhere in this room. Nobu eventually tried the lights, and a sack of coins fell onto the firewood.

They threw coin after coin in the slot machine. Nobu watched the wheels roll with laser focus, but the last of three [7]’s eluded him after four attempts. At that point, Yuuki shoved him aside and tried for herself. She did not let him have another go even when she performed more poorly than he for each of her six tries.

Claire, whose tears had dried up by this point, wandered over to the bright, noisy machines. She could barely reach the buttons if she stood on her toes. With a sweeping gesture of her arms, she made the motion of lifting herself up by the torso. Hesitantly, as if waiting for her to scream if it was not really what she wanted, Ren hoisted her up against his chest. It took both of her hands to yank down the lever. The wheels seemed to stop a split second after she pressed the buttons, which she pressed out of sequence. They all landed on [7]. An ecstatic bell congratulated her as the bottom drawer popped open.

“Hey, nice job, Claire!” Nobu cheered. “Ah, uh, it’s… <Thank you!>”

Her nose wrinkled and her cheeks got round and rosy when she smiled. “<You’re welcome!>” she replied. They recognized the sound of the words enough to remember the meaning.

With all of the cards in hand, Nobu and Yuuki tore through the remaining puzzles in minutes. They traveled in an excited cluster together while Nona seated herself at one of the small card tables near the bar, closing her eyes. She was not good at apologies. She was not much better at knowing when it was her place to give one.

_But the wonderful thing about the twins’ connection was that they did not have to say the words. The feelings passed between them unspoken, that painful mixture of guilt and love that made it hard to find the way to say sorry and mean it._

“M’sorry I yelled at you,” Nona whispered.

_“I’m sorry I left you alone,” said Ennea._

“Maybe it’s gotta _beat_ the hand!” Nobu cried out in a moment of inspiration. “They have [8], so we have to get [9]!”

Nona opened her eyes in time to see Yuuki swap out one card on the table. From across the room, she could hear the click of the glass plate releasing the eight of hearts from the table. Like a bullet, Yuuki flew across the room to the next slot demanding a card. Nobu broke out of his chasing sprint when something caught his eye. It had caught Nona’s eye, as well. Crouching in the center of the room, Claire gave a warm smile to Ren, who was running an elegant, wooden brush through her hair. He was also smiling.

“Where’d you find that hairbrush?” Nona asked.

Ren whipped his head around. The smile disappeared in an instant. Gone with it was the color in his face. “It was,” he uttered, “it was in the… the vanity thing. In the last room.”

Nobu snorted. “Why’d you take a hairbrush?”

As quickly as he had gone pale, Ren grew red in the face. “I—I didn’t!” he insisted, shooting to his feet, fist curled around the brush handle. “It was—Claire took it!”

Claire blinked at the finger jabbed in her direction. Ren’s usually calm voice had turned suddenly sharp.

“Then how’d you know where it was?” Nobu accused, folding his arms with a sneer.

“Well, I—I saw it,” Ren fumbled, “before she took it, I guess. I remember seeing it there.”

“Wait, what?” Yuuki glanced over her shoulder with a dubious look in her eye and a devilish look in her grin. “Ren, I _saw_ you take that.”

“Why—why would I take it?!” Ren protested.

“That’s what I’m asking,” Nobu retorted.

Ren’s lips twitched with fury. Before he threw the brush against the floor, the fist holding it trembled. With a gasp, Claire untangled her pretzel-style legs and darted after the bouncing hairbrush.

“C’mon, _boys_!”

Yuuki pulled open the door she had just unlocked with the remaining playing cards. With the exception of Ren, they had started to cheer in delight at their victory, when the sound of that ominous chime reached them, echoing down the long hall from the great staircase to meet them eleven times.

“Eleven?” Yuuki yelped. “Oh my god, was that _eleven_? Did I just—was it ten or eleven?!”

“It was eleven,” Nobu said in a trembling voice.

“When was ten?!” Yuuki demanded.

“An hour ago, I guess!” Ren shouted, storming towards the door. “Let’s fucking _go!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i would be sorely remiss if i did not discuss [this perfectly expressive and frankly adorable fanart](http://violetleerox.tumblr.com/post/157235617811/i-read-the-first-nonary-game-by-airdeari-and-i). i literally saw this and was like "aww it's the baby boys during the game this makes me wanna write moRE OH WAIT THEY'RE NUMBERED 1 AND 4 SOMEONE READ MY FIC" and let me tell you, my lifespan has increased by five years by the good feelings that gave me. thank you again if you're reading, and thank you to everyone who is reading. i love you all.


	5. The Hospital Room

As Yuuki struggled to bring the Venus key in her trembling hands into the lock that shook as Ren rattled the gate in impatience, Nobu heard a sound, or had a feeling, that made him look over his shoulder just as the two older boys from the beginning of the game burst into the hallway. His lips melted into a smile as he waved at the familiar faces, but only the white-haired boy seemed to notice him at first. All nine children reunited at the gate in front of the stairs, bustling with the same anxiety.

“Hey, did you hear the clock?” Nona asked.

“Yeah, we heard it,” Aoi grumbled. “This gate locked or what?”

“Gate,” Light muttered to himself.

“We got the key,” Nona explained, just as the lock finally opened with a heavy click. “What did you guys—?”

The gate gave a deafening rattle and slammed against the wall with a harsh crash when Ren shoved it aside. Yuuki was the first to slip past the gate as it opened, but as soon as Light fought his way through the crowd, he shot off like a rocket down the stairs. Leaving Nona’s question hanging unanswered, Aoi darted after him, yelling, “Shit, Light, wait up! You can’t fucking—!”

“Clover’s been here,” they heard Light saying as he yanked himself around the bend in the stairs by the hand he hooked around the railing. “I know where we are.”

“Wait, but—but—but—” Hideyoshi pointed down the long, adjacent hall that led to the back of door [5]. “But what about—what—”

Though she had not explored that hallway either, Akane kept her eyes on her feet as she raced to catch up with the boys.

“What—what’s—what’s down that way?” Hideyoshi finally stammered out.

Claire whipped her head back and forth between the children lingering on B-Deck and those descending to C-Deck, unsure of whom to follow. Nona gave her the answer by grabbing her hand and leading her down the stairs.

“That’s where we came from,” Nobu explained, herding Hideyoshi to the staircase with a heavy hand. “We gotta keep going, c’mon.”

Last to descend was Ren, who glowered at the floor he stomped down with each angry step. In his vacant stare was a fire that cast no light.

The children’s kinetic energy took a sharp drop as they came upon a hallway parallel to the one upstairs. Yuuki tried the first of many doorknobs with a lackadaisical brush of the hand as she stormed past, only to stop dead when it twisted under her palm. Aoi’s eyes flashed when he saw the door. He tried the one closest to him with the same success. Light swerved around the open doors like it was part of a dance as he moved towards the end of the hallway.

“What’s—what’s inside?” Hideyoshi asked when Nona opened a third door.

“Just… rooms,” Aoi mumbled. “Cabins. Like upstairs, but not as fancy.”

“ _Way_ less fancy,” Nona said.

“Oh, wait, there was a cabin behind your door, too?” Nobu asked, opening a fourth room with ease.

“Alright, hold up!” Aoi craned his neck around his own open door and squinted down the length of the hallway. “Are _all_ of these doors unlocked?!”

Akane nodded. Claire was running off to prove her right by walking down the hall and opening every door she passed, until Nona called her name and gestured for her to stay close by. She did not return, and she had a pout on her lips that made it clear that she would not return. She did stay still, at least, hanging both hands and her whole weight on the inner doorknob of an open room.

“Is this—is this the—the—the next puzzle?” Hideyoshi moaned. “All these—all of these rooms?”

Nobu jogged down the hallway and peered into all of the rooms Claire had opened up. “They all look the same, though,” he said. “What’re we supposed to do?”

“This isn’t where we need to go.”

Light’s voice echoed off of the walls at the far end of the hall. His eyes were wide open, seeing something that no one else could see. He marched back towards the other children, his cloudy gaze fixed somewhere beyond them.

“Back the other way,” he ordered. “This is a dead end. There’s another—”

“Light, shit, watch—!”

Claire yelped when the door she was holding onto suddenly shook with the force of Light slamming his forehead into it, and that was the last voice in the air before a long, raw silence broken only by Aoi’s pounding footsteps. He pushed past Hideyoshi, Nona, his own sister, as he ran to the stunned boy fumbling to feel for what he had just run into. Light bent his head low, reaching one shaking hand behind him until he found a wall to sink into.

“You alright?” Aoi exhaled as he slowed to a stop.

Light’s lips twitched into a snarl. As his right hand crept up to hold his head, he shoved Aoi back with a push from his prosthetic left.

Aoi barely noticed the blow. He shot a glare over his shoulder at the other kids, which was enough to send Nobu and Claire stumbling back, and for the others to look around and pretend to mind their own business while their eyes stayed wide open with the slow realization of what they had just seen, and what it meant.

“Want me to tell ’em for you?” Aoi muttered.

“Don’t.”

Aoi sighed. Another glance over his shoulder found all of the other kids hurriedly turning their heads towards nothing in particular. “They know, dude.”

Light’s lips were not twitching into a snarl. They were fighting back the kind of ugly grimace that comes with angry tears one does not want to shed.

Aoi grabbed Light’s arm and yanked him away from the wall. “Let’s go,” he said. “Back the other way, right? Let’s _go_.”

He dragged Light behind him as he ran, shoving the doors out of the way with his other hand.

“Come on!” he shouted at the children watching him like deer in headlights. “Over here!”

They blew past the other kids. When Light finally fell into a natural stride, Aoi loosed his hold on the boy’s arm.

“C’mon!” he called over his shoulder. “Hurry up!”

Light surged ahead, holding one hand slightly ahead of his stride just in case. Akane was not far behind, and Nona was dragging Claire along to follow. Yuuki and Ren picked up the rear, pushing the younger boys Hideyoshi and Nobu to keep up.

There was something about the sight of the hospital room that brought on a sense of terror and despair. Perhaps it was the way the rows of empty beds felt like the tombstones of past patients. Perhaps it was because a hospital was how these children had all come into Gentarou Hongou’s terrible scheme. Perhaps all of that combined with the sight of more numbered doors, none of which had a [9], when they had already been through so much, was all too much for the children to bear any longer.

“Three doors,” Nobu uttered.

He looked like he was about to say something more before Ren punched him in the face.

Aoi sprang into action. Nobu was certainly big enough to fend for himself, but he was still young, perhaps no more than eleven or twelve, while Ren looked almost old enough for high school. Aoi shoved Ren back, well away from Nobu, but only got past, “Dude,” before Nobu stormed up and rammed his big fist near Ren’s throat.

The sense of despair in the room had gotten to Aoi just as much as it did the other children. He stepped back from the erupting fight, too numb to care what happened to either of them by the end of it.

Claire broke into another one of her crying fits at the sight of two boys, with whom she had bonded, fighting each other. The sound was much harsher when it echoed across a giant room filled with steel. When she wailed, she kept saying something that the other children could recognize as repetition, but they did not know what it meant.

“<I wanna go home!>” she sobbed. “<I wanna go home!>”

Yuuki could not take more than ten seconds of it before she marched up to Claire and slapped her across the cheek. “Shut _up_!” she screamed. “I can’t hear myself think!”

Nona pulled Claire away from Yuuki, but she was too drained to do more than that. They had all kind of wanted to slap Claire across the face in that moment.

Ren had gotten Nobu into a chokehold and was digging his fist into the younger boy’s scalp, like trying to punch down a balloon hard enough until it pops. “What’s _wrong_ with you?!” Nobu shouted, pulling at Ren’s arm with all of his weight. “Why’d you even hit me in the first place?!”

Aoi gazed at the numbered doors, willing his brain to do math he was too exhausted to think about. If he could just work out a combination of doors that separated Nobu from Ren, and Claire from Yuuki, and still kept him and Akane together—

“Hello! Everyone!”

Aoi startled out of his bleak, slow train of thought at the sound of Light’s voice calling to them from an open space in the far corner of the room, jarringly cheerful despite the read of the room. Light waved when enough time passed in relative silence that he was sure he had everyone’s eyes.

“Yes, could you come over here for a moment?” he asked, smiling.

Nobu took the chance to slip out from Ren’s distracted grip and raced forward. Aoi cut in between him and Ren as they filed over. Nona dragged Claire away from Yuuki for much the same reason. They gathered in a malformed semicircle near Light, no one wanting to stand too close to anyone else.

Light exhaled when he heard the footsteps stop shuffling towards him. His voice was softer when he began to speak.

“I have a little sister,” he said. “She is… _very_ important to me.”

Aoi swallowed, glancing at Akane, who watched Light with the knuckle of her first finger pressed between her teeth.

“Right now, she is over in Building Q,” he went on, “and is desperately trying to send information over to me.”

Yuuki blinked and then frowned as if she could not yet make sense of the meaning of those words. Nona’s eyes went wide. She tried to catch Nobu’s attention, but he purposely looked away.

“Her name is Clover,” Light said, “and today is her ninth birthday.”

Aoi could not help the air that seeped out of his lips in an unbidden sigh. Then, when Light slipped his hand inside his jacket, and the pieces all fell into place, Aoi could not help the air that rushed into his lungs in an unbidden gasp.

“I was going to give these to her as a birthday present. I was outside picking them when I was abducted,” Light said of the nine clovers he held out in his hand. “I’m sure you already know this, but… I am blind.”

The children all exchanged worried looks as soon as he said it, now that they were sure he could not know they were doing so.

“For a man who can’t see,” Light said, trying to maintain his easy smile, “collecting nine of a very specific plant is… well, it is difficult. But my sister means a great deal to me, and I hoped that these would show her how much I cared for her. Since it’s her ninth birthday, I thought nine four-leaf clovers would be appropriate.”

Claire’s tears started to dry. Ren’s head had started to cool. Yuuki was breathing deeply for what might have been the first time since they woke up on this boat. Aoi could feel his cold heart softening like butter. He glanced over at Akane to watch as she lowered her hand from her lips.

“Every one of you has a brother or a sister in Building Q with Clover,” Light said, his voice going dark and low. “For their sake, we _have_ to survive. We _have_ to get off this ship. Do you understand?”

Some of the kids nodded. Some of them just gave guilty, troubled looks down at their feet as the weight of those words pressed down on their shoulders.

“If we’re going to do that, there are three things you have to remember.” With his thumb, Light traced the edges of the leaves of one of the clovers in his hand as he spoke. “We need to _hope_ and _love_ , and we have to _have faith_ in one another. If we can take all three of those to heart, then I promise that _good luck_ will come our way,” he explained. “Did you know that the leaves on the four-leaf clover mean faith, hope, love, and luck? Those words are leaf words.”

This smile brightening up his face had a tinge of the smugness that he got when sharing his extensive knowledge with others, but beyond that was pure joy, welling up from the affection he felt for his little sister.

“So if you believe what I’ve told you, and you understand,” Light said, holding out the clovers, “then I want you each to have one of these. They’re a promise, between friends.”

Akane, mesmerized by his words, was the first to take a clover from his hand. Nona was close behind, and then the hands reached in almost all at once. Their shoulders pressed close to one another as they drew in towards Light, but something he had said made it feel more like the touch of a friend.

When the hands stopped picking, Light ran his thumb over his palm to feel that he still had two clovers left. “Claire hasn’t taken one, has she?” he guessed.

“No, she’s got one,” Yuuki said, casting a discreet gaze at the little girl fawning over the four leaves of the little gift she did not fully understand.

Akane caught Aoi’s eye. Just as he shook her head, she gave a devilish grin and snitched anyway. “It’s Aoi,” she said with a gentle laugh. “Aoi needs one.”

There are some things that will unequivocally make you start to fall in love with a boy. One of them is watching him talk about what is most precious to him in life and subsequently facing him head on as he holds out a four-leaf clover like a flower he has picked just for you.

“Keep it,” Aoi muttered, glancing away desperately as he felt his heart reacting to the imagery. “Give it to your sister or whatever. I don’t need it.”

“I’ll give her the one I’ve kept for myself. Please,” Light said. He tilted his head to let the hair hang away from his smiling face. “A promise between friends.”

Aoi carefully plucked the clover from fingers he did not want to touch for fear that they might burn his skin.

_Ironically enough, the clover would make its way to Light’s little sister eventually, though it would take a very long time._

Aoi gave his head a shake to bring himself back to his own reality. He gave Akane a quick glare, but she would not stop grinning.

“Now, don’t ever forget,” Light said, turning to the rest of the children, “so long as you have that, we will always be connected. Do you understand?”

Cautious but warm smiles greeted him. He could not see them, but he could feel their warmth.

“Then let’s sort out how to get through these three doors,” Light said, holding his hand on his hip. “[3], [7], and [8], correct?”

“Wai—wai—wait!” Hideyoshi cried out. “If you’re—how do you know that if you’re—?!”

“Yes, let’s all discuss this out in the open,” Light said. “I mentioned that I was receiving information from my sister, didn’t I? And I believe I’m not the only one. Hideyoshi, you were mysteriously able to figure out where the last piece of our first puzzle was.”

Hideyoshi’s eyes went wide with awe for only a moment before he felt the pressure of others’ eyes on him. He shrank back away from his place near the center of the cluster.

“How many of you are hearing and seeing things that are not happening to you?” asked Light. “How many of you are receiving the experiences of your brothers and sisters?”

“I am,” Nona blurted immediately, shooting her hand up high in the air before she lowered it to point at Nobu. “And he heard his brother.”

Nobu shrank away. “N-no, that was—that wasn’t—that can’t be—”

“It’s real!” Nona insisted. “It’s happening to all of us! We can _all_ do this, that’s why we’re here!”

“She’s right,” Light said. “That’s six of us who’ve received information. Me, Hideyoshi, the two of you, Akane, and Claire.”

Nona’s excitement died down very quickly. “Who’s… Akane?”

“Wait, Claire?” Aoi asked, raising his voice to drown out Nona’s.

Light heard his urgency. “The reason she wanted to go through door [5] was because she saw her sister go through door [5] in Building Q,” he said. “Oh, and that’s one more, isn’t it? Who was the one who mentioned that our siblings were in a placed called Building Q when Gentarou Hongou had never said that phrase to us?”

Yuuki jabbed a finger at Ren. “I remember that!” she yelled. “That was you!”

Ren had no words for himself. His mouth hung ajar under his wide eyes.

“Oh my God, are _all_ of you guys psychics?” Yuuki moaned. “Why the—why am _I_ here, then? I can’t—”

“Yuuki, you thought you saw a rulebook in the casino room. You saw something that wasn’t there,” Nona said. “You’re one of us.”

“N-no! No way!” she shot back. “I’m not anything like that! I can’t—I can’t read minds, or—”

“It’s very difficult to tell when you’re receiving information from someone else,” Light said softly. “It feels like the information is just part of your own mind. We’ve grown up like this, accepting that there are things we sometimes see or hear that shouldn’t be part of our conscious experiences. It feels natural after all of this time.” Light smiled and pointed to his closed eyes. “I only realized it was happening when I kept _seeing_ things after I went blind.”

Hideyoshi’s jaw dropped to the floor. “You’re seeing everything in the—the—the copy building!” he realized. “ _That’s_ how—how—how—that’s how…”

“There’s another reason why it’s so difficult to be aware of this phenomenon. It’s the reason that our siblings in Building Q know nothing about what we’re doing on this ship,” Light said. “They don’t understand that they are transmitting this information. I don’t believe it’s a conscious act. We quietly receive it, and send nothing in return. If you haven’t told your sisters and brothers about your ability, they know nothing about it. It’s not a mutual connection.”

“It’s not?” Nona mumbled, while Ren sighed with relief.

“Not in my experience. I’ve talked about it with Clover at length,” Light said. “What this means is that we must copy their decisions exactly when they go through doors. We are all—well, most of us are wearing the same bracelet number as our siblings, so if we copy their door choices, we can maximize the receiving power of our teams and solve these unfinished puzzles.”

“Hey, hold on. Not everyone’s got the same numbers,” Aoi said. “ _You_ don’t. Yours got switched up. And…”

He did not say what he wanted no one else to know, but what Light had already deduced, about how it did not matter where Aoi and Akane were sent.

“We’re going to have to split up into three groups of three players this time. Ideally, we would want bracelets [9] and [1] to be paired together so that we can both pass through the same rooms as our siblings,” Light murmured, holding his hand to his chin as he thought through the numbers. “We can only hope that Holly and Clover have realized there’s been a mistake, since they heard their names reversed when the experiment began. They went through a door together last round, as well. Perhaps…”

“I can get my sister to tell them to stick together if you want.”

All eyes turned to Nona, even Light’s.

“I, um,” she said, glancing warily underneath their sudden stares, “I don’t think the connection only goes one way. I mean, it’s definitely not like that for me.”

“Your sister can hear you, too?” Ren asked.

“Uh-huh. It’s always been like that,” Nona said with a shrug.

“Tell her _everything_ we’ve discussed,” Light commanded, his hand shaking.

“I mean, she was listening the whole time,” Nona said, “right, Ennea?”

_Ennea nodded. She was not very good at speaking up, especially not while Reed was beginning to give bracelet assignments for the next set of doors, but with a bit of Nona’s confident energy in her heart, she piped up her little voice and said, “Actually… can we… can we listen to what the other group’s talking about first?”_

_Reed paused and widened his violet eyes. That was all it took. She just had to get the first words out, and then the rest would follow._

“Okay, they’re waiting on us,” Nona said. “So we need [1] and [9] to go through a door together, right? Anything else?”

A giddy, twitching grin crept up on Light’s lips. He had heard Ennea speak through Clover’s ears. They truly had a line of communication to the other team.

“There’s—there’s—there’s probably a few bracelets we should—should split up,” Hideyoshi suggested, glancing meekly up at the thin red streaks on Nobu’s cheek. “And—and—and some of us aren’t as good at receiving as other people. I—I mean, I’m not—I’m not—I’m not—”

“Oh, yeah, we should split it up so we have someone really good on each team,” Nona said. “I’ll take a team—Light, you can take a team, right? And then maybe—”

Hideyoshi pointed right at Akane.

“Violet?” Nona murmured. “No, wait, are you…?”

Akane lifted her head slowly, just now reacting to the attention on her. Her eyes saw far beyond these walls. “Door [7],” she whispered.

“Door [7]?” Aoi repeated.

“I have to go in door [7].”

Nona jutted out her lip as she frowned. “Nobody’s picked doors yet on the other side,” she said. “Why d’you have to go in door [7]?”

Akane slid her hand into the pocket of her skirt and squeezed something.

“Look, just let her do what she wants,” Aoi said, tapping his foot to seem impatient. “I think she’s more psychic than all of us combined. I’ll go with her—me and her are [9], so add [7] and we’ll take door [7].”

“Oh, yeah, that’ll work,” Nona said. “I was gonna say Nobu should lead a group, anyway.”

Nobu looked stunned to be named to such an honor. Nona gave him a determined look and a thumbs-up.

“Then bracelet [2] needs to join me,” Light said. “That’s the only remaining combination that will allow Claire and I to go together. We’ll go through door [3].”

“That okay with you, Ren?” Nona asked warily.

Ren shrugged. He was back to his quieter self.

“Who’s left?” Yuuki asked. “You and me, and then…”

“[6] plus [3] plus [8],” muttered Hideyoshi. “It—it works. It all works.”

Yuuki grimaced. “Oh. You.”

“You get all those, Ennea?” Nona asked. “Yeah, [4], [5], [7] for door [7]. Is that good?”

_“It even keeps all the English speakers together like you wanted, Reed,” Ennea said. Her mouth felt dry after proposing her case, but the words did not stop tumbling out. “Holly and Clover stick together, and you and Vi.”_

_“W-wait,” said the youngest player in Building Q, her polka-dotted legs squirming in her boots. “Can… can you tell my brother something?”_

Nona snapped her gaze to Light, who laughed gently and shook his head. “I can hear everything they’re saying,” he said. “I should be the one asking you to give a message to her.”

_“You can probably just say it out loud,” Ennea said. “He just said he can hear everything you’re saying.”_

_Clover held her hands to her cheeks and squeezed her eyes shut in concentration. “Are you okay?” she called._

_Ennea giggled. “He’s laughing at you. He’s fine.”_

_Clover pouted and stamped her foot. “Light! This isn’t funny!”_

_“Can I tell her about her birthday present?” Without waiting for an answer, Ennea shook her head. “I’m gonna tell her about her birthday present.”_

The explanation had to be brief; it was well past time that the children headed through the doors. Lingering in Light long after that was a feeling from Clover, the feeling of being so bitterly happy that you want to cry—better known, perhaps, as love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did you know light literally messes up the leaf words when he tells the babies the story? i had to fix it. he says faith, trust, love, and luck, because hope is garbage, faith harder. faith twice. have faith AND trust. light!!!
> 
> he also said he's sure "I've already told you" that he's blind, but I don't believe that for a Got Dam Second so i changed that too. he hides that shit long as he can, to this day. nowadays it's just to fuck with people but.


	6. Door [7]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i remembered how to write short chapters... and also how to give aoi kurashiki a Gosh Dang Break. shoutout to snow & kit - the boy will smile.

Kenshin said I always bit off more than I could chew. We usually played like equals, he said, but he was two years older than me, and sometimes I needed to keep that in mind.

“I’ve been taking lessons for two more years than you. You shouldn’t try playing the stuff I’m playing yet,” he would say.

“You can’t always play sports with me and my friends. We’re bigger and stronger than you. You’ll get hurt,” he would say.

“It’s too late for you to be up. I’m doing homework. Go to bed,” he would say.

Mom tried to explain it to me. He was thirteen now, she said, and that was a difficult age. He was trying to find his place in the world, and sometimes having a little brother attached to him made it hard for him to find that place.

“But our place is _together_ ,” I insisted. “He’s my best friend.”

And I was his, she promised. We would always be best friends, for the rest of our lives. But sometimes, a best friend has to know when to give someone time to be alone.

I didn’t get that part so much.

“I told you,” Kenshin said when he finally got to visit me after the surgery.

My leg was elevated and wrapped in plaster. Behind the fog of painkillers, I could feel the burning line of the scar they had sealed up along my shin after they put the bones and tendons back in the right places. Kenshin said I passed out when I first saw the injury, which explained why I didn’t remember it. One minute I was in a casual game of soccer, trying to steal the ball from my brother’s friends and breathing so hard I could taste blood, and the next I had a towel wrapped around my leg, which felt _wrong_ in a way I can’t even describe, and people were lifting me onto a stretcher.

It hurt a lot, but then Kenshin was nicer to me than he’d been in months. Maybe years.

“I guess I’ll do the pedal when we play piano now, huh?” he said.

I felt like there were weights on my face when I tried to put on my fighting smile. “No way,” I shot back. “I do the pedal. I’m better at it than you.”

“But it’s your right leg broken,” Kenshin said, “and you play all the bass parts, so—”

“Then we’ll learn something where I play treble,” I said, “and I’ll use my left foot!”

“But you’re better at the bass parts!” Kenshin protested.

He had a genuine grin on his face. I felt like I’d forgotten what it looked like until then.

“It’s the same reason you’re better at the pedal,” he said. “Even when I can’t keep a steady rhythm, you always follow me.”

“’Cuz I can read your mind,” I joked, pressing my fingers to my temples.

That was just my way of describing what it felt like to play piano together. When I sat next to him on the bench, I felt him breathe. I felt the energy rolling through his body and jittering in his fingers. I knew where he would get excited and speed up, and I knew where he would get bogged down by all the notes and slow down. And when we practiced enough, I knew what his musical interpretation of the piece would be. I would take that measure slower and softer in the middle if I were leading, but I knew Kenshin, and he would slow down more towards the end, even if that wasn’t how the music was marked up. It was because he was my brother, and I just knew him really well, I thought.

Then they wheeled me into a special post-surgery session, one where they said it would be best if Kenshin participated, too. “How’s this help with surgery?” I asked when a man with hands as cold as ice fitted the weird goggles over my eyes.

“It’s a sort of a mental therapy, to complement your physical therapy. Just say whatever comes to mind,” he replied before sliding the headphones snugly over my head. If I tried to ask him another question after that, I wouldn’t hear the answer.

Given those directions, I spoke. I talked about how Kenshin had been extra nice to me since I got hurt, but I hoped we would stay that way even after I got better. I talked about how my leg didn’t feel like it hurt that bad because, inside that plaster cast, it itched harder than it hurt. I talked about how I was never any good at sports, anyway, so it was okay if I couldn’t run or even walk right for a while.

_Dog._

My train of thought derailed. It was just a flash, but a bright, loud one, and all I could think was—

“Dog?” I mumbled.

The session ended a few minutes later.

“Wait, so what did they even take you in for?” I asked as Kenshin wheeled me down the hall back to my room.

“I dunno,” he muttered. “They just gave me this weird dog toy—like, a toy _of_ a dog, not _for_ a dog—and he told me to… think about it.”

My heart was quiet but fast. I felt like my lips couldn’t move.

“What’d they do with you?” Kenshin asked.

I didn’t answer at first. He asked again, and I pretended to snap out of spacing out. “No, I was just thinking—it was the opposite, I guess,” I said. “They told me to think about anything.”

And I thought about a dog.

I took painkillers two hours too early by whining to my mom that my leg hurt really bad today, just so I didn’t have to think about it anymore. I think I blocked out the whole thing from my memory because it was just too weird. I didn’t remember it again until Nona looked me dead in the eyes and accused me of reading my brother’s mind from across the ocean. It was still too weird to think about, but it was a little less scary when I realized I wasn’t the only one who felt these things. I had something special with Kenshin. He was my best friend, and he’d be my best friend for life. This bond proved it.

But as vivid as my flashes of him were, they were fleeting, infrequent glimpses. Maybe I was biting off more than I could chew.

 

* * *

 

Nobu trailed behind Akane as she flitted about the operating room. He tried to grip the scalpel, but it hurt to close his right hand around the handle, so he made Akane cut the heart out of the plastic torso. Even the pressure against his fingers when he tried to pick up the model organ was too uncomfortable to bear. He tucked things Akane gave him under his arm until they made their way to the medicine cabinet, where Aoi told him to set the things aside. “Ain’t like we’re gonna lose it if you put it down,” he said. “Hang out here a minute. I’m gonna find you something.”

“Find what?” Nobu asked hesitantly.

Aoi pulled a jar of cotton balls off of a shelf and raised it to him as if making a toast. “Next time you try to fight back,” he said, “make sure you know how to fight.”

Nobu slid his right hand behind his back. “I’m—I’m fine,” he lied. “Don’t—we have to solve this puzzle, right? We don’t have time to—”

Aoi gave a gentle smile to the girl pouring red water into a beaker. “Hey, Akane,” he said, “you got this under control?”

When she flicked on the light, one of the lockers gave a click as it came unlocked. She gave a grin over her shoulder at Aoi. For some reason, his smile seemed proud.

He soaked a cotton ball in antiseptic and dabbed it against where Ren had dragged his fingernails down Nobu’s cheek. Nobu’s whining and squirming could not break his focus. With medical tape, gauze, and an artful application of cotton, he not only made bandages for the scratches, but crafted a sort of splint by pressing a wad of cotton balls into Nobu’s palm and binding it down with gauze and tape. He folded Nobu’s unscathed left hand into a proper fist.

“Keep the thumb outta the way, first off, or you’ll break your thumb,” he said, curling it over Nobu’s second knuckles. “You wanna strike with your knuckles, not the flat part of your fingers. That’s why you’re bruisin’ up. And make sure you keep your wrist straight or you could jam it.”

The layers of tape and gauze on his right wrist were keeping it straight. It felt comfy to have his fingers gently curled around a cushion of cotton, his hand resting by his side.

“And before you even think of punchin’ anybody, use what you got,” Aoi said, lifting his left wrist and pointing at the bracelet. “If I were either o’ you, I woulda smashed this into your faces. This thing’s tough as a brick and it’s got hard edges. Bones break, ’specially the ones in your hands. You don’t wanna punch if you can help it. Use what you got.”

Akane came by to punch a code into the safe beside where Aoi was sitting on the edge of the table. While Nobu stared at the bracelet on his left wrist, they traded smiles again.

“That would’ve really hurt him,” Nobu mumbled after Akane scurried away with what she needed. “If I did that to Ren.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Aoi said with a yawn.

“But I don’t wanna—we have to work together!” Nobu protested. “Why would I—?!”

“He didn’t have a problem fuckin’ you up with all he’s got,” Aoi shot back, circling his cheek with a finger to point out the stinging scratches on Nobu’s face. The dangerous look in his pale eyes softened when he turned them aside and muttered, “Jesus Christ. You and Light.”

Nobu slid his hand slowly into his pocket to feel the cool, soft leaves of the clover he had taken from the blind boy. It did not seem as though Aoi had noticed until now that he had not stopped holding his, pinching its stem between his index and middle fingers, so that the fat leaves sprouted on his hand like a verdant ring.

“Aoi,” Akane whined from the door, her arms full of legs. “Help me carry these. We have to give them to John.”

“John?” Aoi repeated, hopping off of the table.

“Or maybe it’s Lucy,” Akane murmured as she left.

If there were any hints for the password to the safe, she had not found them in this room. There was also no file to tell them the names of the two mannequins that she assembled and disassembled, much less the weights she was supposed to achieve. She did not even look at the kilograms steadily decreasing as they swapped out John’s limbs with Lucy’s.

“Everything but the head, the left arm, and the heart,” she said. “We have to give him Lucy’s parts.”

“Why’s that?” Aoi asked as he crammed the slightly-too-large heart into the cavity in Lucy’s chest. As soon as he eased off of the pressure and the scale dipped back down to the proper weight, he got his answer, and they got their key.

“Nona said _I_ was supposed to be the leader of this group,” Nobu mumbled as they made their way to the door.

Aoi shrugged. “Nona didn’t see Akane.”

He had called her by that name enough times that it had started to seem normal to Nobu. He had almost forgotten the name he thought had belonged to her. He played the sound of the abandoned name over and over in his head, wondering where it had come from. So distracted was he by those thoughts that he did not pay any attention as Aoi and Akane pulled a map off of the wall and traced out their paths and position. In unison, with the same awe in their wide eyes, the pair turned their heads down the hall as they realized where they were headed.

They seemed strikingly similar in that moment, though otherwise they looked nothing alike. Nobu attributed their synergy to the fact that they had gone through the same door in the last round of puzzles, and maybe their group had been more amicable than his.

Aoi threw open the double doors at the end of the hall. The same sea of hospital beds greeted them from the other side. In vain, Nobu darted into the center of the room and spun around to see if, perhaps, this was not the same place as they had just left, but the splattered red paint numbering the doors was the same as before.

“The hell is this?” Aoi demanded, looking around just as anxiously as Nobu. “The hell was the point of all that?! We’re just back where we started!”

“I—I don’t get it. Wasn’t this the only way we could go?” Nobu mumbled. “I mean, besides all those little rooms.”

Before Nobu had finished speaking, Akane gave a little gasp and darted off in that direction. After a sigh, Aoi nodded over his shoulder to Nobu as he ambled along in pursuit. Nobu seized the opportunity granted by his slow pace to ask the question.

“Her name’s Akane, right?” he asked.

Something too quick to identify flickered through Aoi’s eyes when Nobu said it. “Y-yeah, I think so,” he said. “S’what she said.”

“I thought that guy from the beginning called her Violet.”

Aoi frowned. “Wait, she’s… I thought Violet was that other girl,” he said. “The one with the vest.”

Nobu shook his head. “That’s Yuuki.”

“Then who the hell is…?” Aoi cut himself off with a shrug. “Well, she says she’s Akane. Whatever.”

He ended the conversation by jogging to catch up with the girl in question, who stood at the end of the long hallway holding out her hand for the Jupiter key.

Nobu squinted through the sudden brightness of the hall behind the door they had unlocked. He was sure he had seen this golden décor before, and the tile floors, and the ornate staircase. If Aoi seemed agitated when he found himself looped back around to the hospital room, he was livid now.

“You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me,” he growled.

The map slipped easily from his fingers when Akane grabbed it. While she traced their path, he stomped up the staircase, past the golden placard, and up to B-Deck.

“ _Are you fucking kidding me?!_ ” echoed through the whole stairwell when he saw doors [4] and [5] again.


	7. Door [3]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello i have loved the number three all of my life but it betrayed me today and also in this chapter that took me a whole month to get through because Ren is a grumpy baby who keeps lying in front of the narrative momentum. also Holy Language Barriers Batman. anyway enjoy

Everyone in the house got anxious when they heard the noises from Sachiko’s bedroom. Or maybe I got anxious a little before that. I could always feel it coming.

I thought Dad hated her because of the way he would talk about her when she wasn’t in the room. “What’s she going on about now,” he muttered, the newspaper crinkling in his tensing hand.

I got to thinking that it was his way of getting out his frustrations. Mom sometimes yelled when she was frustrated. She always came to us afterwards, calmer but sad, and said she was sorry for yelling, she was just frustrated about something else. Sometimes we said mean things to people who didn’t deserve it when we were frustrated about something else. It happened to me, too, every now and then.

But Sachiko couldn’t say mean things.

She ripped the sheets off of her bed. She shoved the books off of her shelves in a horrible mess of thuds and fluttering pages. She pounded her fists against the walls, slammed the doors, and stomped down the stairs.

“What’s the matter, dear?” Mom asked.

When Sachiko grabbed her left wrist loosely and twisted her hands, back and forth, it looked too similar to the repetitive motions she always made when she was trying to expel a lot of energy. Her lips were tight and her eyes filled with tears as they scrunched up. She would sob if she didn’t hate the feeling of her own throat vibrating.

“Tell me what’s the matter,” Mom said. She always talked to Sachiko as if she might decide today to start talking.

A mask of rage covered Sachiko’s face. She shook her arms as she twisted her hands and her wrist, back and forth, back and forth.

“I don’t understand, sweetheart,” Mom pleaded.

I usually didn’t say anything until this point, because it always took me this long to realize that Mom or Dad really didn’t know what Sachiko wanted, even if I felt it clear as day. It was all a cycle of training. Mom and Dad were trying to train Sachiko to communicate, and I was trying to train Mom and Dad to understand.

I broke the cycle. “She can’t—she can’t find her—her—her bracelet,” I piped up.

The day I realized that Mom and Dad would never learn how to understand Sachiko was the day I learned that Dad muttered things behind everyone’s back.

_“At least the second one can almost talk,” he said into the rim of his coffee mug, giving Sachiko a glance as if he were sure she didn’t understand him._

I didn’t realize I had a stutter until Dad told me I was going to the speech therapist about my stutter next week. I asked my friends if I had a stutter. They all frowned and shook their heads. The conversation went on as usual until someone paused it to point out that wait, maybe I did have a stutter.

It was hard to notice, because I spoke quickly. I didn’t have problem words or letters, like most stutterers. I might say “the” twenty times in a row rather than let the sentence hang unfinished while I found the right word.

Sachiko and I were going to go together. It was some kind of special, new speech therapy, where we would do group and individual sessions. I thought it all sounded kind of strange when one of us could speak just find and the other couldn’t speak at all. Sachiko went to speech therapy a long time ago, or something like it, someplace where they eventually told us they couldn’t help her if she couldn’t even make a sound.

It was weird that the guy explaining the procedure for the sessions had a stutter, too.

I thought the mask and the headphones were to make me feel like I was in privacy after being given the prompt to relax my body and mind and talk about anything that came into my head. I thought they were studying my speech patterns, the way I would fill my pauses with repetitions of the word I had left off on.

It wasn’t until after that initial session that the man observing me began to take notes. Sachiko and I united in the hallway. To my surprise, Sachiko was euphoric. Wearing a giddy grin, she splayed the fingers of her right hand and rubbed them lightly over the sleeve of her favorite cardigan.

“Something fuzzy,” I said. It wasn’t really a guess.

She nodded with delight. Her hands clenched into fists and pulled apart from each other.

“Stretchy.”

She jumped up and down and held her bright red cheeks. She had loved the snake toy.

“A—a—a snake,” I added, when I realized it.

“Th-th-th-this is outside the controlled environment,” whispered the stutterer to the larger man beside him. “I-i-it isn’t valid d-d-data.”

“I don’t care,” the other man hissed back. “That’s _it_. They’re communicating. They’re accessing the fields.”

I thought he was angry. Then I thought maybe he sounded angry because he was frustrated about something else. I still don’t know what he was frustrated about, but I think it might be the reason we’re all on this boat.

 

* * *

 

“Engaged?” Hideyoshi said after door [7] had shut with Aoi, Akane, and Nobu on the other side.

“Oh, yeah, you didn’t see it ’cuz you guys went in first,” Nona realized. “Once somebody goes in the door, it says [ENGAGED] on the scanner.”

Light frowned. “Did it say anything previously?” he asked.

“Y-yeah,” Nona said, glancing away from him. It felt wrong to look at him when he could not look back. “It says… the other two still say [VACANT].”

“They light up with—with asterisks when you scan numbers in,” Hideyoshi added.

“What happens if we try to scan our bracelets on the panel that says [ENGAGED]?” Light wondered. “We can just test it to see if it will open. We won’t go _through_ the door. It’s door [7], so… let’s have Claire and I scan our bracelets, plus bracelet [6].”

“Bracelet [6] is—is Yuuki,” Hideyoshi offered helpfully, but Nona shook her head.

She pressed her hand to the scanner before Yuuki could step forward. “Nothing happens,” she explained, hitting the panel to show Light what she was doing. “It just doesn’t register. There’s no beep or star or anything like before.”

The color drained out of Light’s face before their eyes. “Interesting,” he murmured.

Claire gave uncertain glances to Light as she watched Nona, Yuuki, and Hideyoshi disappear into door [8]. After the door slammed shut, she spoke in English to Light, something with the upward cadence of a question. Light’s nod had a twitch to it as if he were trying to shake himself out of a reverie. He gave a soft response and a softer smile. Then Claire pointed at Ren and asked another question.

Ren had isolated himself in the far corner of the room by door [3] ever since he heard himself assigned to it. The math told Light who was left, and the angle of Claire’s voice told him in which direction he could find the owner of bracelet [2].

“I don’t think either of us knows your name,” Light said.

He dug his hands deeper into his pockets. “Ren,” he muttered.

“Ren,” Light repeated, nodding once to him, and once to Claire. “Do you mind if the two of us speak English to each other?”

“Whatever.” He tapped his hand to the scanner. “Let’s just go.”

At the beep from the RED, Claire scurried ahead of Light, who guided himself among the beds and along the wall with a cautious hand. Although Light’s eyes were closed, Ren felt like he was being watched.

“Can you find the RED okay?” he mumbled, staring at the floor.

“The RED?”

Another word Ren had picked up without realizing it came from Aiko’s head.

Claire stood up on her tiptoes by the panel and pressed her palm to it, lighting up the display with another asterisk. “That thing. The scanner,” Ren said when it made a sound. “It’s… red. Like the color.”

“Clever of them,” sighed Light.

He trailed his fingers over the door, running through the blood-red paint in the shape of a [3]. “Higher,” Ren said quietly when his hand passed under the RED.

Light frowned as he pressed his palm to it. “Is this hard for Claire to reach?” he asked.

Claire caught the sound of her own name, because she had been watching Light with wide eyes when he failed to find the scanner on his first try. “She kinda stood on her toes,” Ren mumbled. “Does… she know you’re…”

Light’s face went from pensive to, for a flash, irritated, and then it fell blank. “Perhaps I’m stating the obvious, but we seem to be playing a game that wasn’t designed for children.” His face sank back into that dark, pensive state again as he pulled the lever. “It could be that this isn’t the first time it’s been played.”

Ren did not grant himself the time to consider that possibility. He knew by now how quickly the doors closed after they swung open. As soon as the bloody [3] split in two and gave way to the hallway on the other side, Claire darted through the door, and Ren jumped for the opening. Each had grabbed one of Light’s arms to drag him through.

“I’m _perfectly_ capable of _walking_ ,” Light snapped once they made it to the other side and the countdown began.

He snatched his hand back from Claire without difficulty, but the arm in Ren’s grip swung awkwardly when he tried and failed to wrench it away. “I’m gonna put your hand on the other scanner!” Ren protested, holding fast to Light’s sleeve while his eyes darted around the room for the device that would stop the timer. “Sorry I don’t wanna fucking _explode!_ ”

“I _know_ where the DEAD is.”

Light ran around the bend in the hall that first greeted them as if he could see it, and as if he did not realize Ren was still hanging onto his left arm. He barely brushed the walls with his fingers to confirm that it ran the way he expected. He stopped dead in front of the DEAD and got it under his palm in a single try. Ren, almost tripping over him as they ran, did not wait for Light to lower his hand before slapping his own on top of it. Light’s hand was cold and hard for that brief moment that Ren touched it, before it vanished into his pocket again. Before Ren could get his head over his shoulder to look for Claire, she slipped between him and Light, jumped up, and slapped the panel.

Ren reached for the lever, only to find Light’s fingers already curled around it. He yanked it down so hard Ren thought it might snap off. When the chime of success sounded and gave way to silence, he glared directly at Ren, eyes fluttering open to reveal these green, cloudy things that did not look like human eyes.

“This is _exactly_ why I didn’t tell you.” As his hand fell from his forehead, he raked his fingers through his hair to bring more of it in front of his twitching face. “I’m not an invalid.”

In the harsh silence that followed the sound of his raised voice ringing off of the bathroom walls, Claire raised a tentative hand towards him. She waved it in front of his downcast eyes, slowly at first, but picking up speed as time went on without his noticing. Just as Ren was going to reach for her arm, perhaps communicate a universal expression of “stop it, that’s rude” with his face, she pulled her hand back to her mouth, pressing a finger to her lips. Her other hand slipped into the space between her white shirt and her overalls. It came out with the wooden hairbrush from the vanity in the first class cabin. With a serious look in her round eyes, she handed it to Ren without a sound.

Ren’s body chose to take it before his mind was made up. He blinked, and the brush was in his tight grip. He tucked it back into his pocket.

Light had stepped away to map out the room with his hands, fitting the mental image transmitted by Clover with the physicality of his own surroundings. He heard the quick, awkward gait of a child plodding towards him. Just after a too-eager tug on his sleeve, Claire asked softly, “<D’you want me to show you around the room?>”

If someone had described these circumstances to Light, he would have guessed that his next move would be filled with undeserved vitriol. Claire was spared his temper by something that happened on the other side of this hellish experiment.

_“ <So we’ll prolly stick together for the rest of the doors, right?>” Holly asked, nodding at Clover’s brief explanation of Ennea’s reasons for splitting up the players into these new groups. “<That oughta be nice. You remind me of my little sister, ya know. She’s your age, and she’s got red hair just like yours. Her name’s Claire.>”_

Light’s face softened. His shoulders fell back to their usual height as he sighed, and then he gave a gentle reply.

“<I know what the room looks like. I saw it through my sister’s eyes,>” he said. “<You can see through your sister’s eyes, too, can’t you, Claire?>”

“<Sometimes, yeah,>” Claire chirped.

“<Then could you do me this favor instead?>” Light asked. “<Can you show me everything in the room that’s _different_ from hers?>”

Ren found a reprieve in the sounds of his companions speaking a foreign language to one another. His eyes glossed over the bathroom without catching on anything as he leaned against the wall beside the DEAD. All of the breaths he took in came back out as sighs, no matter how many he took.

“<There’s nothing here,>” Claire reported. She wore a pout as she slid her hand along the blank wall, somehow expecting to read something upon it.

“<Do you mean to say that the letters are missing?>” Light asked. “<Letters in red paint. L’s and R’s in some order—probably for left and right. There’s no doubt that this will be an essential clue. Tell me if you remember the order.>”

Claire’s pout grew stiffer as she concentrated. “<Naw, Holly won’t show me anything,>” she murmured. “<I’m gettin’ a busy signal. That’s what Mum calls it.>”

Light, who had started to move towards the exit to examine the lock beside the door, froze in his stride. “<Your mother can receive thoughts from your sister, as well?>”

Claire shrugged. “<Sure, I think anybody can, if she wants ’em to,>” she replied nonchalantly, rocking her weight from her heels to her toes and back. “<That’s why they call her Holly Hypnosis.>”

Light was suddenly aware of the fact that he knew that Claire’s hair was cropped sharply at her chin, that she stood with her legs slightly bowed, and that her eyes were a deep auburn. Cutting through that image was the one that had been playing through his head since Aoi, Akane, and Nobu went through door [7]: the red [ENGAGED] clogging up the RED.

“<Hey, Light,>” Claire murmured, “<how come Ren and that boy were fighting?>”

Light had guessed that the boy who accompanied them into door [3] was one of the ones involved in the scuffle he had heard when they entered the hospital room. Being of little use in most interpersonal affairs, he determined that his best option would be to ignore the event and leave Ren his space.

“<Can you ask?>” Claire requested.

Light was too tired to deliberate; he took his role as a passive translator almost instantaneously. “Claire would like to know why you got into a fight,” he said in flat Japanese.

Ren’s shoulders shot up. He moved his arms to fold them across his chest to make the motion seem more intentional. His eyes betrayed a hint of horror.

“He… he said something,” he mumbled. “Whatever. I’m over it.”

Light turned towards Claire with a sigh. “<He’s not being very explicit,>” he reported. “<Did he start the fight?>”

Claire nodded. “<I think so, anyways,>” she said. “<Ren got angry at that boy before, when we were lookin’ in our rooms and all, but then—then Ren punched him out in the hospital place an’, an’ I dunno why.>”

“<We’re all _very_ stressed, Claire,>” Light said with another sigh. “<Sometimes boys will get violent when stressed. It’s a biological response to danger. Certainly it can happen in girls, as well, but boys have social and cultural pressures on them that make it more likely for them to become violent.>”

Light’s own eyes were glazing over as he rattled off fact and theory. Claire tuned him out until his voice stopped being in her ears, then asked the only thing she had picked up from his rambling: “<So Ren’s not really mad at him? They’ll be friends?>”

“<I don’t know if they’ll be _friends_ ,>” Light chuckled. “<We’ll keep an eye on them.>”

“<What’s ‘friends’ in Japanese?>”

Light had not been living in Japan for a very long time. Everything he said still felt like a translation and rearrangement of words he originally composed in English. In the dictionary entry next to the keyword _friends_ , he found _tomodachi_ , but he instead chose the word he had used when passing out the clovers, one that was less about friendship and more about working together as a team.

“ _Nakama_ ,” he replied.

Claire did not know why Light had given out the clovers. Despite this, it was still the clover that she dug out of her pocket when she inched towards Ren, who was trying desperately to investigate a toilet stall to distract himself from his racing thoughts. His teeth were chattering when Claire tapped him on the back. He fell still when she held out her four-leaf clover, her face tight with resolve.

“ _Nakama_ ,” she insisted.

She had played piano with Nobu in the first class cabin. She had let Ren brush her hair in the casino. The last thing she deserved was to see those two fight each other. He fished out the clover he had stuffed into his own pocket and held it next to Claire’s.

“ _Nakama_ ,” he repeated. With a thick, uncertain accent, he added a phrase he could say in English. “<I’m… sorry.>”

The smile blooming on her face glowed with warmth and light. Then her expression gave a sudden, wide-eyed twitch, and she whirled around towards Light. “L, L, R,” she shouted, “L, R, L!”

Just like that, they were back to puzzling. Light bridged the gap of the language barrier for the rare moments that it was an obstacle, not often with direct translations, but by being able to speak to and understand both of his partners. In return, they were his eyes for the rare moments that he needed them. They flooded the drain with the clue hidden from their walls and the note not found by their pipes. As Ren was passing Light the keycard for him to examine, Light’s hand twitched, and then he brought it suddenly to his head.

“<I know what that is,>” he uttered. “<Clover, I know what that is. It’s a cipher.>”

Ren could not understand his English, but he heard Clover’s name enunciated.

“<Check the…>” Light shook his head, then pointed in Ren’s general direction. “Check the toilet paper rolls. Is there ink on the rolls?”

In vain, Ren swept through the stalls like a cat, batting at each roll to spin it and expose a length of unmarked white. “Nothing,” he called at the last toilet.

“It’s a… <scytale cipher, I believe it’s called.> A way of writing in code, many centuries old.” Light had been dipping in and out English the whole time, but now it was happening in the middle of sentences. “The message is revealed by wrapping the paper around some kind of cylinder—<the broom handle, that must be it.> You need to wrap it around the broom.”

Ren could see Light’s hand trembling in front of his face as he held it. “So what do we do?” he asked nervously.

“<The other team>—the other team doesn’t understand the solution,” Light said, his voice uncharacteristically frenzied. “It’s… it _must_ be possible for us to send them information, too. _She_ could do it.”

Ren flinched. “Y-you mean, Nona? What she was saying?” he squeaked. “We need _them_ to hear _us_?”

Light did not answer him; he was speaking in English, but it did not seem as though he was talking to Claire. “<They need to wrap the paper around the broom handle to reveal a message,>” he said, his words running together with the speed of Japanese syllables even as the complexity of English consonants urged him to slow down. “<I’ve _received_ my whole life. I need to _transmit_. Clover… >”

_“ <Naw, don’t tear it, we’re prolly gonna need it like that,>” Holly said as Clover began unwinding the roll around her fingers. “<Let’s just leave it alone till we get all the clues, right?>”_

_Clover felt something nagging at the corners of her mind, dancing on the tip of her tongue. It felt like her brother had told her about this puzzle before, even though that was impossible. It was like a feeling of déjà-vu: she felt the presence of memories or knowledge that she could not conceivably have._

“It won’t reach her.” Light sounded utterly defeated. “How… how can I…?”

Ren had an instinct. He could feel the switch in his head, how he could turn it, how he could push instead of pull. There were no words to explain the sensation to Light; it was as natural in his head as moving a muscle. He would have better luck explaining how to lift his own arm. The logical answer was to transmit the information himself, to his own sister.

But Ren did not want to transmit. He knew he could die if he did not share his thoughts with Aiko, yet that still did not compel him. In fact, death seemed more enticing. So he tried explaining.

“Can’t you just… flip it?” he asked meekly. “Like, the way you feel it coming in… can’t you just flip it the other way?”

Light whirled around to face Ren, looking ready to pounce. “Can _you_?” he uttered.

“I—I-I—no,” Ren stammered. “I mean, I… I just… why would you _want_ to be able to do that?”

This dumbfounded Light enough to render him uncharacteristically silent, which in turn made Ren nervous enough to become uncharacteristically chatty.

“It’s opening your whole head,” he mumbled, scratching his scalp and further mussing up his untidy hair. “She—she can just… see anything she wants. Everything.”

“I trust my sister.” Light did not miss a beat. He looked almost confused when he asked, “Don’t you trust yours?”

“I—I _trust_ her, sure, I just—there’s…” Ren curled his fingers into tight fists. “There’s stuff I don’t trust with anybody.”

“She trusts you,” Light murmured.

Ren’s breath got caught in his throat when he tried to reply. “Really?” he said with a crack in his voice. “N-no—I just… _steal_ stuff from her. She doesn’t even know.”

“If you can control it, so can she,” Light said. “She trusts you, Ren.”

Ren inhaled deeply. He wanted to cry. He hoped she would not know. He would rather she knew that than some of the other things swirling around in his troubled head.

Everything flowed out of him. He made noise. He was loud and bright and looked at and listened to. Aiko was staring at him.

“They h-have to w-wrap the paper around the broom handle, r-right?”

_Aiko had been content to let the two Anglophones chat with one another while she quietly poked around the bathroom in search of clues. She had not gotten a look at the toilet paper, nor had the other girls spoken a Japanese word about the markings on it. Despite it all, something possessed her to say, “Hey, Clover, can you wrap the paper around the broom handle, right?”_

_The last word, that “right”, did not belong in her sentence, but it fell out anyway, as if the sentence was a train that she could not stop._

He felt a chill in his soul from the air sweeping over his exposed mind. His open thoughts began to race, churning out more and more feelings he could not risk anyone invading, especially not his own sister. He clawed at his scalp as if trying to hold his head closed.

Light’s face pointed way over Ren’s head when he turned to say something to him, having not heard him slowly sink to one knee. Ren did not hear what Light said; he could not have said whether it was Japanese or English. He kept his mouth open so that the shaking breaths were almost inaudible on their way in and out of his lungs.

But Claire saw. Claire stared at him with eyes wide, frozen as if in a trance. He turned his head sharply away to break their eye contact. Light was definitely speaking in English now, probably, or maybe the entire world was just falling apart. The floor looked blurry. He stared at his hands and blinked, but they were shaking too much to focus on.

His stomach was a mess. He curled over it in agony, sure that he was about to vomit. He envisioned himself crawling to the nearest toilet and lifting his face above the rim of the bowl, willed himself to follow through, but he could not move through the numb that gripped his whole body and shook it.

He jumped when Claire tugged on his sleeve. For the brief moment he could bear to look at them, her eyes still seemed lost in a trance. She pinched the end of a thick lock of her hair between her fingers, lifted it slightly, and ran her opposite hand down its little length. To end the gesture, she held out her hands in front of her, palms up, asking for it.

Slowly and silently, Ren drew the hairbrush out of his pocket and returned it to her.

The weird, tingling feeling he got in his scalp when she ran the brush through his hair was an old memory. Aiko had brushed his hair like this when they were children, and woven braids into it, before he had to cut it off to start his first year of school. It had felt just like this.

“Ren?”

Only after a delay did he startle at the sound of Light’s voice, distant enough to not concern him. He was still dazed, and Claire was still detangling the snarls in his hair, when he responded, “Yeah?”

“There’s a second keycard we need. It’s in the tank of one of these toilets,” Light said. “Could you look? You’re the only one with both the necessary height and visual acuity.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll—”

Claire was splitting a section of his hair into three strands.

“H-hang on. Claire’s… she, um…”

“There’s no rush,” Light said absently. “I don’t believe they have the correct password yet.”

Though she was slow and methodical, she had Ren’s unruly hair to contend with. The braid she managed was plagued with bumps and flyaway hairs, but when she tucked it behind Ren’s ear, it looked somehow at home.

“That must be it,” Light muttered to himself. “They’ve discovered another number. Ren, have you found the second keycard yet?”

Ren rocketed to his feet, holding a protective hand to the braid in his hair. “One second,” he called over his shoulder as he darted into the nearest stall.

Mapping out the keys by touch, Light typed in the correct password with ease after scanning both keycards. His fingers faltered just before submitting the code. He frowned and turned towards the locked door.

“I think you have to hit the enter button,” Ren mumbled, reaching for it.

“No, I…” Light pressed the button, and a cheerful beep confirmed their answer. “I hear something.”

Despite the audible click of the door unlocking, no one moved to escape yet. In the stillness, Ren heard water sloshing on the deck beneath them, and the sound of metal groaning. Thoughts of the clock in the central staircase made him wonder how much time had passed inside this room, and how little they had left.

Light broke the spell when he took the first step to the exit. Ren followed cautiously. When he felt a tug at the edge of his sleeve, he took Claire’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

As soon as Light opened the door, Ren heard what Light had been hearing. Not the haunting sounds of the ship failing under their feet, or the chime of a clock ticking down to their last chance of survival.

Children crying. Sobbing.

Light took off, and Ren was not far behind, urgently pulling Claire along with them. Their footfalls pounded through the hall towards the sound, with Ren calling out directional cues to Light to guide him around the turns, until they came upon the huddle, cowering in a corner. Nona looked up first from where she crouched over Yuuki and Hideyoshi, one hand on each of their shoulders, tears glistening in her eyes. Hideyoshi’s nose was running, and tears blotted his crooked glasses as he tugged desperately at Yuuki’s sleeve.

Yuuki did not look up. Yuuki would not meet their eyes for a long time. She clawed at her wet, blotchy face frozen with fear a girl her age should never know. Her body was visibly shaking as she curled up on the floor and cried, absolutely broken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (hey snow do you regret theorizing about the dummies in my vicinity yet)


	8. Door [8]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter you will find:  
> -three (3) stolen ideas from snow  
> -tragedy and mistakes
> 
> please enjoy, i'm going to go update the archive warnings to include "graphic depictions of violence" and repent

I thought I had done the right thing.

The test in front of me was stark white, demanding answers I could not possibly know. It was the second time I was taking a test like this, because I passed the first one, and they wanted to know why. It had been fun the first time, like it always was when we pulled our tricks on people. They always looked for the gimmick. There had to be some concrete, scientific reason for how we were able to do what we do.

Maybe a little part of me wanted to know that reason, too. Maybe that’s why I showed off on the first test. Maybe that’s how we got to this far.

It all started with a test, a normal test. A middle school math test. One with a red 56 circled at the top, and red X’s running all the way down.

_Her chest got tight as she stared at it. She flipped the page to look at the inside, but the sight of even more red made her heart pound and it got even harder to breathe._

“It’s okay,” I whispered into my hands in the middle of Japanese Lit. “It’s just one test. It’s okay.”

_The teacher started going over the answers, but she could not look up. She heard the sound of people turning their pages to look at the next question, but she could not move. Her lip trembled as she tried to hold back tears._

“Just listen to the answers,” I urged. “Figure out what you did wrong so you can do it better next time. Everybody makes mistakes. It’s okay.”

_Looking at her mistakes head-on hurt too much. She wound her legs around each other, tangled her fingers together and squeezed._

I found her between classes and gave her a quiet hug. She didn’t want to speak.

_Mom’s gonna kill me._

“She’s not.”

_I’m gonna fail math class._

“You’re not.”

_She’s gonna be so mad._

“You’ll be fine,” I sighed, giving her one last squeeze. “Stop thinking about it so much. It’s just one little test.”

She did not stop thinking about it, in a way. It was not at the forefront of her thoughts most of the time, but her heart still raced, her chest still hurt, her palms still sweated, her lip still trembled. In disbelief, I felt her living with this all day, turning every moment into a nightmare. I woke up an hour before my alarm the next day to the sensation of her still feeling like this. I asked her if it was still about the test.

“Is _what_ still about the test?” she asked.

So I told Mom. I told her something was wrong with Ennea. I came close to frustrated tears as I tried to explain what had gripped her, and how I knew, and how it just felt _wrong_ but she thought it was normal but I knew, I _knew_ this wasn’t how she should be.

Mom put her hands on my rising shoulders and gave me her warm, knowing smile. She talked to Ennea. She made phone calls. She asked me if I wanted to come along for moral support. And that’s how we both ended up at Cradle Children’s Clinic.

“You know, it’s because of this one that we even came here,” Mom said of me while chatting with the receptionist after Ennea came back from the intake appointment. “I swear, the girls have that psychic twin thing. They know what the other’s thinking.”

The receptionist looked kind of nervous for a second, and then she started pushing for a type of group therapy where I could participate alongside Ennea. Mom looked at me, and I shrugged. And that’s how we both ended up at Cradle Children’s Clinic again, the next week.

“You’ll be in a quiet room,” said the long-haired, severe man leading me away from Ennea. “You’ll wear some noise-cancelling headphones, and goggles that block out the light.”

I didn’t like the way his cold hand felt on my shoulder, herding me further away from my sister and speaking to me like I was a child who needed comforting. When I slowed my feet, he pushed harder.

“You’ll sit in a comfortable chair,” he went on, “and you can talk about anything you like.”

“Why do _I_ have to do this?” I whined. I had a feeling why.

“It’s part of the therapy,” he said, opening a door and gesturing me inside.

I did not move. “ _I_ don’t need therapy,” I told him.

His eye twitched, breaking his smile of plaster. “It’ll only be for a short while. Come.” He practically yanked me through the door. “I want you to talk about anything that’s on your mind.”

I stumbled forward and glared at him. “You know I’m not Ennea, right?” I snapped. “I’m her sister. I’m _Nona_.”

“I _know_ ,” he said, shutting the door behind us. The impatient twitches in his smile were increasing in size and frequency. “I want you to tell us everything your sister is thinking.”

I don’t really know what to say for myself. If I wasn’t such a showoff, we wouldn’t have gotten here.

_The big man gave Ennea a toy of a stuffed rat. “I want you to concentrate on this,” he said._

“Ennea hates rats,” I said as the man was fitting the headphones over my ears.

_“I hate rats,” she mumbled._

“But you know what she does like?” I said, loudly, grinning hard enough that Ennea would feel it on her face and know what I was up to. “She _really_ likes frogs.”

_Ennea smiled wistfully. “But I really like frogs,” she added._

“There are always a whole bunch of tadpoles in the creek at the neighborhood park,” I said, keeping my cadence slow so that Ennea could follow.

_“One day, we took a pool net from the school gym and brought it home with us so we could catch the tadpoles,” Ennea sighed. She thought this charade was a little embarrassing, especially if Nona wasn’t even in the same room, and the story Nona had suggested was even more embarrassing._

“We filled a jar up with every tadpole we could catch,” Nona chirped. “We were catching them until dark.”

_“We thought we were just going to keep them in the jar, but we ended up with so many,” Ennea said. “So we put them in Mom’s pond in the backyard.”_

“She always wanted it to be a koi pond, but she never got around to adding the koi,” Nona explained. “So we thought we could just borrow it for the tadpoles.”

_“They were so small, she didn’t even know they were there for a while,” Ennea added. “But then, a few months later—”_

_The door slammed open. The man in the lab coat with the wild hair and the wilder eyes was gasping for air as if he had run all the way here._

_“G-G-G-Gentarou,” he stammered. “Th-they’re—they’re t-talking in p-perfect unison. I-I-I have it recorded.”_

I lost my connection to Ennea after that. I was startled, and she felt suddenly shy, so we split apart. I returned to the dark silence of my own room, squirming in my chair.

“Are… are you going to tell people about us?” I asked nervously, though I couldn’t tell if that thin man was still there to hear me. “Like… our teachers and things? I promise, I don’t do it on purpose, it just—it gets stronger when I’m trying to figure something out really hard, so sometimes if we’re taking the same test at the same time I’ll hear her answers, so—and it’s not like I can _unhear_ it or anything, so—so…”

As a kid, it feels special and safe when you tell an adult a secret and they treat it with respect. When these men promised to keep it all private, I felt like I could trust them. I saw them as my allies, maybe even my friends. They just wanted to study the phenomenon from a purely scientific perspective, they said, and they’d keep our information confidential. And that’s how we ended up at Cradle Children’s Clinic for the third time, the next week.

It was still therapy, they said. They told us it was therapy, and we believed them, because they were wearing white coats and taking notes. They told Mom it was therapy, and she believed them, because she didn’t want to ask us about our sessions if we didn’t want to talk about them. “It’s your own business,” she told us.

On that third visit, they gave me a test that read like brain teasers and logic puzzles, but with white-out blocking out half of the important information.

_They gave Ennea a test, too, but the questions were undisturbed. She started working at them straightaway. She loved these kinds of puzzles, truth be told._

“No fair,” I said when I saw hers. “She’s got all the answers. All the missing stuff, I mean.”

“Can you see the complete questions on her test?” prompted my proctor, leaning forward.

He was an overwhelming presence, in more than just his size. There was this intensity in him that he could not seem to keep under control when he watched me work. Questions bubbled out of him, interrupting my visions and my trains of thought as I tried to scribble notes and answers down.

“Are there certain conditions that make it easier for you to feel the things your sister feels?” he asked, eyes wide. “You’ve mentioned that it’s intensified when you’re trying to take tests. What part of the test-taking do you feel contributes to your connection? What emotions are you experiencing, for instance?”

I wanted to tell him that the condition that would help me most was if he would kind of shut up for a little bit.

“I dunno, it’s just… kind of everything about test-taking, I guess,” I said instead. “I’ll feel her a little better if I really need to figure something out. It kind of focuses my brain if I’m working out a problem, and everything sort of… settles, and quiets down, so I can hear her better. And then if… if I’m a little nervous—or scared, even, I’ll… it’s like I’m reaching for her, and I really need her. I think the same thing happens for her. I felt her really strong when she started having her, her ‘anxiety’ thing, whatever it is. So she was really afraid, right? So I started feeling her stronger. And in tests, you’re nervous, and you need to figure things out, so that’s when it’s the biggest.”

And that’s how we got here.

_The rats were crawling on top of each other, clamoring for the wire bars that imprisoned them in a space too small for so many bodies. They looked unwell somehow, like maybe they had been pulled out of some kind of cruel scientific experiment for a brief reprieve to be part of someone else’s study._

_The man with the cold face put his hand on the latch to open the cage. Ennea felt her chest getting tight again. She could feel her heartbeat in her ears._

_“If you don’t answer these questions in the next fifteen minutes,” he said, “I’ll open this door.”_

I could feel everything Ennea was feeling. I could see the test in front of her eyes, but I couldn’t read it through her tears.

“I don’t wanna do this anymore,” I whispered.

The man’s giddy smile fell.

_“And you must transmit the answers to your sister,” he added. “If your sister hasn’t completed the test within fifteen minutes, I’ll open the door, whether you’ve finished or not.”_

“Please don’t do this,” I begged, staring at my lap. “She doesn’t get afraid like normal people. It’s the anxiety. It makes her whole body hurt, and she can’t get rid of it for another whole day. That’s why I—I told Mom about it so she could bring her here to get help. Can’t you help her?”

His huge hand slammed down on my test and shoved it in front of my face.

“If you don’t finish this test, you know what happens to your sister,” he growled.

Nineteen minutes and thirty-four seconds was our time on the test before this. They were trying to get us to do it faster.

“If I do it, will you let us go home?” I pleaded.

“Yes, fine, whatever,” snapped the man, thrusting the test down in front of me.

We finished in thirteen minutes and seventeen seconds. Our hour-long weekly session was up. We reunited at the door leading to the lobby. Ennea was still wiping tears from her eyes.

“Don’t cry, okay?” I told her. “I don’t want Mom to worry. I’m gonna tell her you don’t like it here, but don’t cry, or she’ll get angry and make a whole scene and everything—you know she will. So I’m gonna tell her tonight that you don’t like those guys and we wanna go somewhere else. Okay? And she won’t bring us back here, and we’ll never have to do this again.”

Ennea sniffed and nodded. I hugged her until she stopped shaking.

Everything seemed to go according to plan. I told Mom, casually, later that night, that Ennea just didn’t like the doctors, they were kind of belittling to her. Mom cancelled the next appointments. We never went back.

That last part of the promise, the part where we’d never have to do this again—that’s the part I couldn’t keep.

 

* * *

 

For two hours, the nine children aboard this sinking ship had felt desperately alone, wandering through long corridors and enormous rooms with only each other for guidance and company. They had made a kind of peace with this reality in that time. With no one else there to save them, they promised, holding four-leaf clovers close to their hearts, to save each other.

The sight beyond the glass pane bisecting the laboratory would be unsettling under any circumstances. Inside the desolate Gigantic, it was terrifying.

She looked as though she had been plucked from a normal life and thrust onto this ship just like the rest of them, by the strappy black heels and ruby red toenails on her splayed feet, by the shining jewelry on her limp hands that dangled off the side of the crude sort of operating table, by the wild, shiny waves of her hair tangled in the wires leading into her head. She was a woman, an adult. She was not moving.

Yuuki steeled herself with a snarl. “That’s not real!” she shouted, marching towards the open doorway leading to the lower level of the laboratory. “ _That’s not real!_ ”

Of course it was real. Everything about her was undeniably lifelike, except where it was more deathlike. But if Yuuki convinced herself otherwise, she could still be brave, and she had to do anything in her power to stay brave when other people could see her. She had not yet realized that this desperation was what made her so unlikable, when she twisted her fear into anger and then pointed that anger outwards.

She clenched her hands into fists and stomped her feet to proceed while others cowered. Her broad strides grew slower and shorter as she approached the staircase, when there was no wall of glass between her and the body on the counter, and it still looked incredibly real, and dead, and something else.

With a rattle and a crash, the gate came down, trapping Yuuki on the other side, not quite alone.

She whirled around immediately, terror seizing her face. “Oh my _God_!” she shrieked, pulling at the bars with all of her weight. “Let me _out_! _Who did that!_ ”

Hideyoshi scrambled over to grapple at the bars with her, while Nona scanned the room in a frenzy. She held her hands to her temples to poll Ennea for a solution, once she saw that it was too late to give a warning. The red light gleaming from the other door caught their eyes at the same time. Nona shoved the door, yanked on it, pounded on its face as if it would respond to knocking and politely open up. It did no such thing.

“Tell Yuuki to try it from her side!” Nona called to Hideyoshi. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the sound of Yuuki’s kicking and screaming.

Wide-eyed, Hideyoshi swallowed through his dry throat and nodded. “H-hey, hey, Yuuki,” he stammered, raising a quivering finger to point in Nona’s direction. “There’s—there’s another—another door, there’s—it’s—can—it’s locked—can—can—can you—can you try to—to—to—”

Yuuki threw her head over her shoulder, staring down into the room in which she found herself, at the walls blocking her in, at the cage in which she had been caught, at the woman, at the machine with the wires leading to her unmoving head. Her hands squeaked along the bars she gripped as she slid down to the floor, holding an unblinking stare. She could not determine what really terrified her, whether it was being trapped with this cadaver, or being trapped in and of itself.

_“Hey, don’t worry, okay?” Hideki called through the bars. “We’re gonna get you out of here. We’re not gonna leave you behind, promise. You can—you can hear me, right?”_

“Yuuki? You can—you heard me, right?” Hideyoshi said hesitantly. “The—the door, it’s over—”

“Shut _up_ , Hideki!” she screamed.

“My name’s Hide _yoshi_ ,” he protested with a small pout.

With shaking knees, Yuuki rose. She clung to the railing as she descended the short staircase to the laboratory floor, then darted back to slink along the wall towards the opposite door Nona had found. She kept her eyes trained on the center of the room.

They were all watching the woman. They all saw it, and screamed, when the woman’s dangling left hand gave a twitch.

Yuuki lost the last shred of her resolve. She scrambled back up the stairs to the iron bars, tugging on them with all of her strength as she burst into sobs.

“The other door!” Hideyoshi yelled, waving towards it with frantic, shaking arms. “Try—try the other—!”

“It’s no good, it’s locked,” Nona moaned. Hair slipped loose of her high ponytail as she grasped at her scalp to keep her hands from trembling. “They tried it in the other place, it’s not—it’s locked.”

Tears smeared across Yuuki’s face and the iron bars to which she pressed it as she sank back to her knees, knuckles white. She had lost control of her situation and, now, of herself. As far as she was concerned, she had lost everything.

“Get me out of here,” she whimpered. “Get me _out_ of here, get me out of here, get me out of here…”

Hideyoshi crouched at the other side of the gate and grabbed her hands. His lips quivered too much for speech, so he nodded.

“I’m looking for clues,” Nona called, tapping loudly on the keyboard to try to stir a dormant computer. “I’m looking, Ennea’s looking, I’m looking with Ennea…”

_But Ennea, too, only had fragments of the puzzle in front of her. She could not get a clear picture of what was happening on Nona’s side of the experiment, but she knew it was urgent. She had scanned every piece of equipment on this side of the laboratory and had no leads. In order to solve this puzzle, she needed access to the other side of the room._

To an outside observer, Hideyoshi was engulfed in Yuuki’s visceral emotion, empathically terrified. That was certainly part of it; even Nona was shaken by the sight. The other part was thousands of miles away, a silent mirror of Yuuki, and the second side of a coin with Hideyoshi.

Nona thought of the way she had to be when she saw Ennea like this, the way Hideyoshi now was. She had to be strong, but soft. She approached the boy slowly, and spoke gently as she laid her quaking hand on his shuddering shoulder.

“Hideyoshi,” she said, “your sister can… she can _hear_ , right? She can understand people talking?”

He gazed up and gave a slow nod. Behind his glasses, his wide eyes glistened with tears.

“Can she talk?” Nona asked.

He bit his lip and shook his head.

“Okay, Hideyoshi… here’s what we have to do,” she said softly, gazing past Yuuki. “Your sister’s trapped like Yuuki, in the other place—the copy building. There’s—there’s nobody on the—it looks like it’s just a mannequin or something, but—but she’s _alone_.”

_Hideki crouched at the other side of the gate and grabbed Sachiko’s hands._

“My sister needs to get information from her to solve this puzzle,” Nona explained. “Clues from her side of the room. So what we need to do… is you have to see the clues from her, you tell them to me, and I can tell them to Ennea. And then they’ll be able to help your sister out while we help Yuuki. You get it?”

She could tell he got it by the way his look of general unease transformed into one of paralyzing horror.

A moan came from the operating table.

Nona jumped back and kept running until she had hit the farthest edge of the wall, as far from the _thing_ in the other room as she could possibly get, panting, hearing her blood rushing in her ears. Yuuki squealed and reached out when Nona fled, desperate not to be left behind. For her sake, Hideyoshi fought his reflexes and stayed close.

The voice was painfully dry and weak. “Who’s… who’s there,” it demanded, barely audible over the stifled cries of the children. “No… no… this isn’t…”

The body writhed slowly as it spoke, twitching when it encountered pain. It let out sickening moans as it turned its wired head towards Yuuki, who began shrieking when she saw the woman’s face pointed at her.

“Kids.” The woman’s fell limp again, and her face fell into even deeper agony. “It’s… it’s happening.”

“ _Don’t move!_ ” Yuuki screeched, clutching the bars behind her. “Just—don’t—don’t _touch_ me!”

“I promise,” she rasped, “I won’t… hurt you. I can help. I know… how to… get off this… ship…”

Nona’s eyes flashed. Hideyoshi’s jaw fell ajar. He looked at Yuuki, eyes full of hope.

Yuuki shook her head, rubbing tears from her cheeks on her sleeve. She still kept one hand wrapped firmly around the iron bars. “It’s a trap!” she accused. “You’re _lying_! You’re one of _them_!”

“Listen to—”

Her eyes bugged out right before she fell into a coughing fit, then her body began to give unnatural spasms, twitching violently.

“What—what—what’s happening?!” Hideyoshi cried out. “Is she—is she okay?”

Nona’s eyes went in and out of focus as she shifted her concentration between two different worlds and tried to reconcile them in a way that made it so she did not have to see that woman. She took cautious steps forward.

“Y-Yuuki,” she stammered, pointing into the room. “Under that big machine… there’s a plug adapter. It transforms the plug from three prongs to two. We need it for the… Can you…?”

Yuuki’s voice gave a strange squeak when she gasped. Her knees were knocking, the movements just as wild as the convulsions of the woman on the table.

“D’you see it?” Nona asked warily. “It’s on the cable for that… under that…”

“I know,” Yuuki snapped.

Step by wary step, she teetered down the stairs. The woman’s renewed silence, aside from the jingle of her bracelets and the banging of her limbs as her uncoordinated movements made her knock against the table, made it easier to pretend she was not even there. Despite wanting to ignore her, Yuuki could not take her eyes off of the woman in seizure, seeing all of the terrifying details of her body as she crept closer: the bruises spotting all over her skin and making thick, dark bands around her wrists and ankles; the tiny clumps of matted blood sticking and drying in her hair, trailing down from each of the electrodes driven into her scalp.

Once she finally reached the machine, Yuuki broke her horrified stare, crouching down to examine the cables Nona needed. At that very instant, the woman’s head jerked, and her eyes landed right on Yuuki.

“ _NO!_ ” she shrieked. “ _DON’T TOUCH IT! PLEASE—PLEASE, NO! NO MORE! NO! NO! NO!_ ”

Yuuki scrambled back, cowering in the little space under an observation deck. “I’m not touching it!” she squealed, clutching her face and holding her knees to her chest. “Shut up! Shut _up_! I’m not touching it, I’m not touching anything, I’m _not_!”

The woman gasped in a way that sounded like she was trying to sob, but she could not breathe deeply enough to cry. She had started thrashing about again, but in a different way, like the movements were almost intentional, but she had forgotten how to operate her own body. Her left arm had a full range of motion, but her right was locked at the elbow. Her left leg was twisted inward and would only swing from side to side. It looked like she was trying to get her feet to reach the floor, but she could not figure out how to make them both go down. Her desperate pleas went on until they devolved into wordless screaming.

For a long time, Yuuki just stared at the plug adapter lying a few feet away from her, holding her hands over her ears and shaking as she felt more tears pile up and spill out of her eyes. When she could bear sitting in that cramped space no longer, she rolled forward onto her knees. She wrapped her hands around the cable and the plug and pulled, but her sweating palms slipped off of the rubbery plastic. She wedged a fingernail between the adapter and the plug. The nail broke badly enough to bleed when she pried them apart. On her hands and knees, she wiggled out from under the bulky, wall-mounted machinery and clawed her way up the stairs, thrusting the adapter between the bars.

_Holding back tears in her pleading eyes, Sachiko threaded her arms between the bars and reached out. She caught Hideki’s eye. Leaving Ennea to deal with the computer prompt, he darted back to her. First he grabbed her hands, but when she shook off his hands and grabbed his shoulders instead, he moved closer, pressing himself up against the bars and sliding his own arms between them._

_“We’re gonna get you out of here,” he promised again, hugging her._

“We’re—we’re gonna get you out of here,” Hideyoshi said in a broken voice, hugging her.

She did not hug back; she just clung to the bars and panted with hot, anxious air. But she leaned closer to Hideyoshi, too.

When Nona turned on the monitor, she saw the same cryptic screen as Ennea: a black terminal, populating with some common commands and executable names as it booted. The twins’ mother had taught them both a little bit about the command prompt—its historical origins before the advent of graphical user interfaces, its purpose in modern computing as a lower-level way of interacting with files and software, and of course some basic commands so that they could pop a terminal open and impress their friends.

She kind of recognized the command `make dir` on the screen, short for _make directory_ , a command to generate a new folder, but she could have sworn it was supposed to be `mkdir`. Her mom had mentioned that terminals on different systems were slightly different from one another. She wondered if this command prompt was running on an unknown operating system, maybe a proprietary one, built and owned by the manufacturers of the machine to which this monitor was connected. Nona and Ennea had grown up thinking the word _proprietary_ was a fancy insult because of the number of times their mother had angrily said it when talking about poorly secured software.

The terminal stopped churning out text and ended on a password prompt. Nona wondered if this proprietary command prompt might be as insecure as the software her mother had worked with for her consulting job, and if she could crack it.

Though she did know about terminals, it did not stop her from seeing a large body of text and instinctively interacting with it as though it were a GUI instead of a shell window. She hit the up-arrow key as if trying to navigate to the text resting above the password prompt, maybe to read through the previous output to understand what the machine had already done. In a terminal, however, hitting the up-arrow key retrieves the last user-entered command and sets it as the current prompt input, ready for the user to hit enter to repeat the function, or to edit the text if their last command did not yield the results they needed.

In a terminal running on a proprietary OS, this trick worked even in a password prompt. Hazuki would throw a fit if she saw it.

She kept tapping up until a bit of gibberish text appeared onscreen—`KCZRGHDKKFNQCZHM`, she read it over and over to transmit it to Ennea in case the same data was not stored in the memory of her computer. It looked nothing like a terminal command and everything like an automatically generated 16-character password. Once she saw Ennea had typed out the same string, the twins hit enter, and the screens opened up to the next puzzle.

Nona clicked blindly at the grey tiles on her screen for a few seconds, bewildered by the error messages she received every few clicks, before she saw the splash of color on Ennea’s. Red gave way to green, and green gave way to red. Knowing how the puzzle worked did not bring her much closer to solving it.

“There’s probably only one solution to this,” the twins muttered in unison, and they each turned around to where they would find that solution: Ennea to the iron gate sectioning off the other half of the room, and Nona to Hideyoshi.

_The stench of the liquid on the rag burned in Sachiko’s nostrils like alcohol so pungent it had become poison. Her eyes watered as she scrubbed it into the table with her knuckles, anything to keep it from getting in her nailbeds._

Hideyoshi had held Yuuki’s hands up until he gave a sudden jerk that set him leaning against the nearby wall for support. His hands came to his temples as he stared blankly at the floor.

“I saw something,” he said. “There’s a—it’s—it’s a grid, it’s—it’s a three-by-three grid, with some—some numbers…”

Nona pointed him towards the computer. “I’ll stay with Yuuki,” she said. “If you figure it out, tell me how it works so I can tell Ennea.”

She felt foolish saying she was staying with Yuuki, trapped on the other side of the bars, helpless to do anything. After sparing her a glance that lasted no longer than a second, Yuuki ventured away from the gate, standing with only a little shudder in her stance at the foot of the stairs, though she kept a hand firmly wrapped around the railing as a tether. She was only feet away from the woman on the operating table, who had finally gone quiet. Nona had been too deep in Ennea’s world to notice when it was that the noise went away.

The wheels of the desk chair squeaked when Hideyoshi kicked away from the computer. He pointed not at the monitor, but to its left. A wall of lockers, their lights once red, had come unlocked.

“It was—it was like this,” he explained, using the three-by-three grid they created to explain the puzzle solution. “I pressed the—the squares in the order I saw—one, two, three, four—and it—it—it made a noise, and—”

Nona let Ennea parse the visual information she was passively absorbing while she tore through the lockers. In the center one, she found two keys. Her eyes flicked to the door, for a lock that fit either the rustic-looking key or the strange, round plug. Before she could finish scanning, Hideyoshi gasped and grabbed the latter key from her hand.

“That goes to this!” he declared, plunging the key into the dashboard of the giant machine beside the desk.

Something stirred inside machinery in all parts of the room, rising from a low rumble to a fast whir and whine. The instant that the noises began, the woman was screaming and writhing again.

“ _NO! NO, I’M BEGGING YOU, PLEASE, NO! PLEASE STOP! PLEASE!_ ”

Yuuki’s feet tangled around each other as she tried desperately to back away from the table. Her back knocked against the metal stairs in a way that must have caused her a great deal of pain, but she was too afraid to feel it yet.

“What did I do?!” Hideyoshi yelped, whipping his head back and forth between the experimentation room and the computer. “What did I—what did I—what did I—?!”

“This has to be right!” Nona shouted over the sound of the woman’s wailing. She raced back to the bars to which Yuuki had resumed desperately clinging. “All the machines were off—if we turn them on, maybe we can—!”

“ _I’M SORRY! I’M SORRY!_ ” Her mouth and eyes stretched so wide open, they no longer looked human. “ _ANYTHING BUT THIS, PLEASE! PLEASE! I’LL DO ANYTHING!_ ”

“Hideyoshi, does it say anything on the computer?!” Nona called, but she did not even listen to his stuttered answer. She saw it soon enough through Ennea’s vision.

_Power restored to experimental device. Emergency system will activate in the event of abnormal subject behavior._

Nona looked past Yuuki to the abnormal subject squirming and seizing on the examination table, screaming out of her mind.

“What’m I supposed to do?!” Yuuki demanded, her fingers going white around the bars. “She—she won’t let me—she’ll—what if she—if I—”

_“I found something!” Ennea called over the hum of machinery, waving Hideki closer to the computer. “Look, all this garbage popped up on the screen about how to operate the—the thing in the…”_

“I was looking at it before.” A fleck of spit came from Yuuki’s mouth as the words burst out of her in desperation. “It’s got… it’s got all these dials, and they all have—I think it’s volts, it’s these numbers written in— _huge_ numbers, and they’re all—the wires are all—”

_“I think there’s certain ones you have to turn on,” Ennea said, scrolling through the diagrams and text. “I can’t really tell what’s… Sachiko, are you there?”_

“We—we don’t have to—that’s not part of the puzzle, is it?!” Yuuki begged. “I don’t have to…”

In her blank, empty eyes, Nona saw the blurry image of Ennea’s screen, and both she and Yuuki saw the inevitable.

Yuuki choked out a sob as she shoved away from the gate and stumbled down the stairs. The woman was shivering with fear, tears cutting clean lines from the outer corners of her eyes down to her ears, but other than that, she was still, even as Yuuki’s clumsy, heavy steps came closer. Her hands trembled just as much as the woman’s body as she closed her fingers around the metal band wrapped around her forehead and temples. Gently, slowly, she tried to remove the headgear connecting the woman to the machine.

The ear-piercing screech that she gave at the slightest tug made Yuuki snap her hands up to her ears and stagger back with such a jerk that she lost her balance and clattered to the floor. As she shimmied back to her feet with the wall behind her for support, she saw a renewed brightness to the red matting the woman’s hair and sticking to her skin.

“What am I supposed to _do_?!” Yuuki screamed at her, rubbing frustrated tears from her eyes with the backs of her fists. “How’m I supposed to get out of here?!”

“It’s a trap,” the woman whispered. “Don’t go… Door [9] is… it’s a trap.”

Hideyoshi was too far away for his coughing fit to mask the sound of her words for Yuuki. He and Nona heard none of it, as he gasped for breath and shook his head when Nona asked if he had asthma or allergies to anything in the room.

“Door [2],” she whispered. “The Sun… the key…”

“Yuuki,” called Nona warily, “you need to… you need to turn the voltage all the way up.”

Yuuki whipped her head to the gate. Nona looked more like an apparition in a doorway than a person: pale, still, gazing for miles with a sorrow that sickened all that it touched.

“That’s the puzzle answer,” she said. “That’s how you get out.”

“But what’ll happen to—?”

“I don’t know,” Nona lied.

Yuuki stared at the bloodstained electrodes for a long moment. She scanned the dials on the machinery, on the smaller ones that each seemed linked to one of the electrodes in the woman’s head, on the larger dial that went up to a number with so many zeroes she could not even comprehend how much electricity it represented. She remembered the prank shock her brother had given her with a 9-volt battery, how it had stung enough that she screamed for her parents, sure that he had permanently injured her. That was 9 volts. This was over ten thousand times that.

She dug her fingers into the band around the woman’s head and yanked. Her own sobs muffled the sharp cries of pain as the woman tried to reach for her scalp with her dysfunctional arms. Bolts at her temples locked it in place. Even yanking at the individual electrodes had no effect but making the woman scream even louder.

“Please don’t,” the woman begged, her face red and shining with tears and sweat, her mouth stretched wide as she cried. “I don’t wanna die, please…”

Yuuki was tired of crying. She was tired of the way her lungs hurt as they begged for more air, the way her vision blurred as tears she never asked for came springing up in her eyes, the way her body shook out of her control.

The voltage dial was stiff. Even when Yuuki forced against the physical resistance with both hands, trying to hasten the execution, the machinery was still slower to generate the electricity. The digital display on the voltimeter lagged behind the dial no matter how fast she turned it.

What haunted her most was wondering whether she saw the moment the woman died. After her ear-splitting shrieks rose and rose, after they sputtered off into choking noises as her eyes bugged out and her body started seizing—that instant when she fell silent and her body almost went limp, but for the occasional twitches caused, perhaps, by electricity running through a dead person’s nervous system. Yuuki wondered if that was the moment she died, or if her brain had simply surpassed some threshold of current that it could withstand before completely losing motor control, and she was still perfectly conscious and aware when arcs of electricity sparked between adjacent electrodes and set fire to her bloody hair.

Nona was already waiting at the other door before the fire alarm sounded and the emergency exit unlocked. She was crying. They were all crying, not in sorrow for the life lost in the laboratory, but out of terror and confusion. There were no words to make sense of what had just happened, so all that came out were tears.


	9. Hope, Faith, Love, and Luck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER NINE LADS!! IT'S GOTTA BE A GOOD ONE!!!!
> 
> Oh and just a heads up, **I retconned Chapter 2 a little bit if you read it before May 6, 2017** because (as I feared might be correct but never researched) it turns out Aoi canonically knows a decent bit of English by the time he's playing the first Nonary Game! So basically he says something _slightly_ more coherent to Claire when he hypothesizes that she speaks English, and seems to understand a little bit of Light when he speaks! That's all. You are now missing no information. Proceed as usual.

Ren kept a firm grip on Yuuki’s opposite arm, nudging her to lean against his side when her unsteady legs wavered. She kept one hand latched onto the back of his jacket. The other clasped Hideyoshi’s hand.

Lagging behind the three of them, Light walked with Nona, his fingertips resting on her shoulder. He was willing to let her believe that it was for his sake, for guidance as they navigated the turns in the hallway. They both knew it was for her sake.

Claire flitted around them like a puppy sensing something amiss in her human companions, but unable to ask what had happened. A few minutes after the two groups met up, before they could coax Yuuki back to her feet, Claire had asked, “<What happened? What’s wrong?>” to which Light truthfully answered, “<I don’t know.>” No one who had gone into door [8] would speak about what they had seen. No one who had gone into door [3] would ask.

As soon as Claire understood that they were heading towards the large double doors at the end of the hallway with the intent to pass through them, she scurried ahead of the group. She had to dig her feet into the ground to get enough leverage to pry the doors apart—in the moment before she could get them to budge, Nona thought they were perhaps locked—but eventually the crew was looking back into the large hospital room, and Aoi, Akane, and Nobu were looking back at them.

“Hey!” Aoi shouted, jumping off of the bed he had been lounging on. “What happened?! Is she hurt?! There’s medical stuff behind door [7], I can—”

“She’s okay,” Nona said firmly, her head low. “She’s… physically okay.”

“Her—her finger’s bleeding,” Hideyoshi mumbled, staring at the red stain he had gotten on his finger while Ren led her to the nearest bed.

Yuuki curled up into a ball on the flimsy mattress, pressing her face into her knees. Hideyoshi rushed back to her side when he saw her start to shake again. Claire hovered nearby, worry troubling her lip and her brow.

Aoi called Light’s name only as he marched forward, but Nona lingered nearby anyway. “What happened?” he uttered, dragging Light away from the others for a more private conversation.

Light shook his head. “Yuuki needs time to recover, if we can spare it,” he said softly. “She’s improved over the last few minutes. Do you know how much time we have remaining? Have you heard the clock?”

“It’s 12:30-ish. I ain’t heard it, I fuckin’ _seen_ it,” Aoi muttered back. “You know where we are, dude? We’re back in the same goddamn hospital room. Akane and I found the key for the door at the end of that long hallway, but it just took us back to the staircase from the start of this whole thing. With the [4] and [5] doors and everything.”

They saw the cloudy green of Light’s irises when his eyes fluttered open as he let out a shuddering breath.

“But me and Nobu and Akane took stock o’ the whole place—we still got one new way we can go right now,” Aoi said. “D’you have that keycard we used to get out of the kitchen? The purple—I mean, well, the one with—the keycard, _whatever_ , the one we—or did Hideyoshi take it?”

After a beat, Light pulled from his pocket the two keycards that he had used in the shower room behind door [3].

“Oh, _nice_! That’s—I think that’s Mercury, so—okay, okay, we got _two_ ways to go, if we still got Saturn,” Aoi said, his volume rising with his excitement as he snatched the cards from Light’s hand. “This blank one’s bullshit, I think, but the other one—we went around and looked at all the locked doors and elevators, and they all got these symbols on them. There’s an elevator out by the staircase that the Saturn card goes to, and this one goes to the elevator just outside here. _Nice_. Okay. Okay.”

He sighed with relief, running his hands through his hair. As he, Nobu, and Akane had waited in the empty hospital room, listening to the sound of water sloshing beneath them, he could not help but feel they had somehow made a mistake. Two keys meant they must have done something right.

“Anybody else got keys?” Aoi called. “There’s two more doors—should be just regular keys, with circles on them. One’s got a dot in the center, other’s got a cross, it’s the Sun and the Earth symbols if you know astrological stuff all of a sudden like Akane—”

The little gasp that Nona gave drowned out the one Yuuki let out at the same moment. Nona held out her key to Aoi, the stem pinched between her fingers so that he could see the engraving pointed towards him.

“Yeah! Yeah, that’s the one!” Aoi said, grabbing her key. “Hideyoshi, you heard me, right? That purple keycard from the kitchen—”

After a worried glance at Yuuki, Hideyoshi fished the card out of the pocket of his green cardigan. It wavered slightly in his hand before Aoi took it.

“Anybody see the Sun key?” Aoi asked one more time. “Circle with a dot in it.”

Everyone stared silently at one another, except for Hideyoshi, who stared only at Yuuki, because her eyes had gone wide as they darted around the room expectantly.

“Okay, three keys,” Aoi said with a shrug. “That’s fine. That’s probably enough. Let’s… let’s split up and check out what’s behind the doors, alright? Like, I’ll take…” He balled his fist around the Earth key in his right hand and splayed out the keycards in his left. “I’ll take the Earth key. Just check it out for, I dunno, ten-fifteen minutes, and we’ll come back here. Can some of you guys take the other keys and check those out, too?”

Nobu bounded forward for a key with a cheerful nod. He grabbed Saturn, while Nona slipped her hand in to take Mercury.

It was mostly while looking at Nona’s despondent face that Aoi said, “We probably shouldn’t go anywhere alone. I’ll, uh, I’ll take Akane, I guess. If that’s cool, Akane. So can some o’ you guys…”

“Um, Light, can you come with me?” Nona requested, clutching the key to her chest with both hands.

Light cocked his head to one side by just a few degrees, enough to dishevel the hair hanging in front of his eyes and reveal his puzzled expression. Nonetheless, he nodded, and walked towards where he had heard her voice.

“I’ll… I’ll be fine on my own,” Nobu said, looking at the crew that remained: Hideyoshi, Yuuki, Claire, and the child whose eyes he dared not meet. “I-it’s fine, I’ll just—”

“I’ll go with you,” said Ren softly.

Nobu’s weight shifted back. He glanced up at Ren’s face, but failed to hold his gaze there for longer than half a second before he was looking at his feet. He felt the adhesive that held cotton to his scratched cheek deteriorating as cold sweat softened it.

“Wait a moment,” Light interjected. “Does this mean Claire, Hideyoshi, and Yuuki are all to stay behind while we leave?”

Aoi frowned. “I mean… yeah. That’s the… kinda the point, isn’t it?”

He watched as Light’s face twitched and creased into some kind of intense emotion that he could not identify. “This won’t work,” Light stated. “We… we can’t split up like this.”

Claire hung her body from the edge of Yuuki’s bedpost, twisting her legs and hands around each other as she squirmed. Her left cheek was still a little pinker than her right from when Yuuki’s hand struck it with a sound that echoed inside the high walls of this very room.

“Uh, y-yeah, Claire can come with us,” Ren suggested, beckoning her closer with an urgent wave of his hand. She toddled closer, a curious look in her eyes.

When Light jerked his head towards Ren, Aoi recognized the expression seizing his face as a twisted form of fear. “With… Nobu,” he whispered. “No… no, that can’t… _None_ of these will…”

“Alright, scratch all of this,” Aoi shouted. “I’m decidin’ who goes where. It’s only ten minutes, so just deal with whoever you’re with, alright? Claire goes with Nobu to Saturn, but _Ren_ goes with _Nona_ to Mercury, and Light, you’re comin’ with me and Akane, Earth. Yuuki and Hideyoshi stay here. Got it?”

Nona’s and Ren’s faces both fell, but Ren shifted obediently towards Nona. She gave him a nervous glance, then folded her arms across her chest, rubbing her elbows. Light’s face, on the other hand, went completely blank.

“I’ll show everybody where to go, they’re all on the way to the Earth door,” Aoi said, jiggling his key between his fingers. “We’re all back _here_ in fifteen minutes, or else. Alright?”

“You said ten minutes the first time,” Akane said gently from behind him, wearing a cheeky grin. “Is it fifteen minutes or ten minutes?”

He rolled his eyes and scowled through the feeling of his cheeks flushing. “Fifteen minutes! Five minutes travel time, ten minutes to—look, just get back here quick, okay? Let’s _move_!”

Nona reached for Light’s shoulder, but he moved forward just before her fingers could reach him. She folded her arms again, and Nobu offered Claire his hand, and they were off. Even after she and Ren stopped by the Mercury elevators at Aoi’s direction, her gaze lingered after Light as the remaining children pounded their feet to the central staircase.

“Sh-shit, _wait_!”

Nona jumped at Ren’s sudden shout. She spun around to see him pointing in horror at the elevator call button. The footsteps pounded back in, accompanied by Aoi’s disgruntled, “ _What_.”

“I-it’s just—this is C-Deck, right?” Ren squeaked, his eyes flitting between the kids and the elevator before them. “We’re—we’re right above D-Deck, right? And D-Deck is…”

“Flooded,” Aoi realized. “Shit, the other elevators are—I think they’re the same, they’ve just got…”

The only button available to them was an inverted triangle.

“It’s okay,” said Akane, smiling peacefully at Ren. “You can go down there. You’ll be alright. Aoi or Light or Nobu can go with you instead of Nona, and the other two boys can go in the Saturn elevators, and Nona, Claire, and me can go upstairs to the Earth door.”

Aoi gave the girl a glare for suggesting he submerge himself underwater instead of Nona. “Why the hell should _I_ go?” he asked.

“Because boys don’t drown,” she said. “It doesn’t happen to boys. That’s what Jumpy said. I… I think?”

For never having met the kid, Aoi knew an awful lot about the boy Akane called Jumpy. His real name was Junpei, he was twelve years old, he liked science class best out of all the subjects, he made bad jokes and puns all the time to make Akane laugh, and most of all, he had a love of adventure that gave him a propensity towards dumb bravery. “Jumpy’s full of it,” Aoi retorted.

“Who’s Jumpy?” Nobu asked, and Aoi’s spine went rigid.

“My hero,” Akane said sweetly, rocking back and forth on her heels as she clasped her hands together.

“Seems your hero is none too bright,” Light chided with a smirk. “I’m fairly certain drowning is a universal experience that I’d recommend we avoid. Do the elevators still function, despite their connection to the flooded decks?”

Akane pouted while Nona swiped the card in the reader. When the button glowed with life, she depressed it with a slow, careful push. From within the elevator shaft, they heard the muffled sound of motors and machinery. With a ding, the doors came open, inviting the children into its mouth to tempt their fate. Ren slid his hand into the doorway to block the door from closing again, anticipating the long time it would take for them to summon the courage to step inside.

“Jumpy’s really smart,” Akane protested, breaking the tense silence of their churning thoughts. “Check if the floors or walls are wet. If it’s not, then the elevator didn’t come from somewhere flooded.”

Aoi narrowed his eyes as he stared at Akane, feeling his heart accelerate for some reason he did not fully understand yet. To hear Jumpy’s name brought up in a place like this, he thought, meant that, despite how big and impossible their current situation seemed, perhaps they were part of something even bigger.

Ren kept his feet firmly planted outside of the elevator, but slid his hand across the threshold to feel the walls. “It’s… it’s totally dry,” he breathed. “She’s right. Or, uh… Jumpy’s… right?”

“So it goes to D-Deck or beyond,” Light murmured, “yet it remains dry?”

“All the flooding’s sealed in just part of the ship, so E-Deck isn’t flooded,” Akane explained. “There’s all sorts of steel plates covering up the windows and doors all over the ship, right? Maybe they’re to keep things watertight. And that’s how they know the ship wouldn’t sink for nine hours. They can control how much water comes in, and where, and all of that.”

Light held a hand to his chin and nodded, wearing a pensive frown. “That’s plausible,” he decided. “Precarious, certainly, but plausible.”

“Precarious, plausible, whatever.” Aoi tapped both Light and Akane on their shoulders and waved everyone else along with him into the next hallway. “Nobu, you and Claire’ll check out the elevators same way before you go down, just in case. See everybody in ten. Fifteen. Whatever.”

“Hermes, herpes, whatever,” Akane giggled to herself.

He only half-heard her, but she sounded like she was just quoting a funny line from a movie to herself, so he did not ask her about it.

**— HOPE —**

The trio with bracelets [1], [4], and [5] bid Nobu and Claire good luck with the Saturn elevators behind the staircase they ascended on their way to the door bearing the engraving of the Earth symbol. Once they had made it to the sign reading A-Deck, Light quietly asked, “So what was your purpose for needlessly shuffling the team members so thoroughly? Distraction?”

“Needlessly?” Aoi repeated. “I was just tryin’…”

He thought back on the way he had rearranged the groups. Perhaps it would have been simpler to simply swap Ren or Nobu for Claire and to leave it at that, but he had gone a step further.

“I mean, basically I wanted to split up Ren and Nobu, and Claire and Yuuki, like you were sayin’,” Aoi said with a shrug, “but you looked like… I kinda thought you looked…”

“There was no need to split up Ren and Nobu as long as Claire did not accompany them,” Light said. “You… could have trusted me to take her, right?”

“Trusted you to—wait, what do you mean there was no reason to split them up?” Aoi held out the Earth key without giving Akane a glance; she took it without a word and worked at the door. “Dude fuckin’ sliced Nobu’s cheek. I mean, I fixed it up fine, I think, but I’m not sendin’ ’em off alone together, _or_ with Claire, and I’m not leavin’ _her_ with a girl who slapped her in the face an hour ago.”

Light did not move even as Akane swung the creaky door open. If Aoi did not know better, he would have called him dumbfounded.

“ _That’s_ why you rearranged the teams?” he said, the left side of his lips quirking towards a smug smile.

“Uh, yeah. Why else would I…?”

Light chuckled, following Akane’s footsteps through the unlocked door. “Well, I suppose I could have trusted Claire with Yuuki and Hideyoshi or Ren and Nobu after all, if even _you_ haven’t figured it out.”

Aoi’s face was fuming, and his nose itched from his nostrils flaring and twitching, but he held his tongue. Even if it was at his expense, at least Light was starting to sound like the same snobbish boy from the beginning of the game, instead of the haunted child he had become when he returned to the hospital room.

“Your sister goin’ this way?” Aoi asked, touching his shoulder. “Can you see it, I mean. Are you good?”

Light nodded to Aoi, briefly lifting the hand he traced along the wall. “She’s not gone this way, but, barring any unexpected obstacles on the path,” he said, “I’ll be just fine.”

“Good. Yeah. Got it.”

Fifteen minutes, or ten minutes, or whatever Aoi had told the others, was an overestimate for how much time it would take them to reach the end of their search. No sooner had those last short words left Aoi’s mouth than Akane gave a little gasp. She pointed it out to her brother when the bright number greeted them from the end of the hall. He tapped Light’s shoulder urgently before he took off to see it closer, to see the RED beside it, the confirmation that this was truly another numbered door.

“Door [1],” he said for Light. He ran his hand down the wood paneling, and tried the doorknob just in case. “Whaddya think, Light? [1], [4], and [5]. You, me, and Akane.”

Light grabbed the zippered edges of his jacket in a nervous fist. “That’s an awful idea,” he said.

“I don’t mean right _now_ ,” Aoi protested. “We’ll go back after ten minutes like I said, but when we split up to go through the doors—”

“That’s still…” Light’s nose wrinkled with disgust. “Neither of you have siblings in Building Q, and I need to be paired with Claire so that Clover—”

“Akane’s getting information from _somewhere_ ,” Aoi said in a low voice, glancing at his sister, who gazed at the number [1] door in a complete trance. “I don’t know how she’s doin’ it, but… You’ve seen her.”

“I have not.”

Aoi wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, you have! Literally _two_ minutes ago, with the whole elevator thing, she—”

“It’s a joke, Aoi. I’m blind.”

Aoi froze with his mouth open and his finger poised to jab at the air. He rolled his eyes hard enough that Light could hear them and gave a groan to sell it. “You _ass_.”

Light proved just how blind he was when he laughed, even after Akane finally turned around with tears pouring from her eyes, running down her cheeks, dripping from her little chin. Aoi’s voice got caught in his throat at the sight of her. The moment he tried to reach for her, she bolted, slamming straight into Light’s chest.

“Akane?” Light uttered in disbelief when he realized who had wrapped her arms around him.

“Akane, hey, you okay?” Aoi asked, inching closer. “What’s wrong?”

She was trying to speak, it was obvious, but all of her words stretched into sobs and unintelligible wails. Light tried his best to extract her from his waist so that her brother could reach her. When she showed no signs of moving a single inch, he ran a gentle hand down the length of her soft, brown hair.

“Take deep breaths, Akane,” he murmured. “Everything’s alright.”

“ _No!_ ” she screamed, shaking her head furiously against his chest. “No, no, no, no! Why—why would—why—why—”

Aoi fell into a quiet spell watching Light comfort his little sister. There was this soft side to him that Aoi had never expected when he first met the boy, the one that first came out when he pulled nine four-leaf clovers from his pocket. He was a smart-aleck and honestly a bit of a jerk, but first and foremost, he was a brother, too, and a kind one.

“Can you tell us what’s wrong?” Light asked softly.

“You’re—you’re—” She tilted her head back and sniffed, smearing the tears across her cheeks with the backs of her hands in a sorry attempt to wipe them away. “You’re gonna… somebody… somebody’s gonna _kill_ you.”

Although Light’s eyes flashed and he felt his heart stutter at the prospect, his reaction was nothing compared to Aoi’s, who inhaled sharply and grabbed Light’s shoulder in a sudden vise, terrified to let the doomed boy out of his sight. Light could barely move, not while the fear climbed up his insides like ice coating a window, feathering out in leaf-like bands.

“When?” he asked Akane. “How?”

“I don’t know,” she moaned. Her face fell into her little hands. “The—the bombs… the bomb will…”

Aoi pressed his hand to his gut. “It’s… it’s real?” he uttered. “There’s really… it’s gonna…”

Light held a hand to his own stomach, his face pale. The sight of the know-it-all afraid made Aoi hot with an anger to mask the uncertainty that yearned towards fear. He yanked Light’s hand back by the wrist.

“Okay, no, that’s not gonna happen,” he stated. “We’re not gonna let that happen. You’re goin’ with us through door [1], and then you’re goin’ with us through door [9], and we’ll play this stupid game the way that motherfucker wants us to play it so nobody explodes, and I’m not lettin’ you outta my sight. Got it?!”

Light’s hand was cool with sweat. He held it closed so tightly that it shook.

“Do you realize what’s going to happen to us, Aoi?” he whispered. “Only five of us can go through door [9].”

Their hands went limp at the same time.

“It’s a numbered door,” he went on, hanging his head. “The numbered doors lock after a group enters. Only… A maximum of five, at best… only five people can…”

Aoi looked at Akane first, of course. Her sobs had died down enough that he was sure she had heard what Light said, but she showed no surprise. Aoi was the only one who had not realized the tragic finale awaiting them at the end of the Nonary Game.

“Then… all that shit you told us about the four-leaf clovers…”

“Was to keep us cooperative until the end. Or perhaps it was just wishful thinking.” Light turned his head away. “If only five can advance, then four have to die. I… I can imagine why I should be among the dead. I understand.”

“ _Light!_ ”

Aoi screamed his name without knowing what he was going to say next. He grabbed Light fiercely by the shoulders, hands squeezing as tight as they would go, and wrenched him away from Akane to glare into his empty, hopeless eyes. Something wanted to rise into his face, something that was making it twitch into a pained expression, something he had not experienced in years. He shoved himself into Light, digging his fingers into his jacket. He was desperate for the promise of something solid in his arms.

“You’re not gonna die,” he snarled. “Hope, faith, love, and luck till the end, alright? I’m not gonna let you die.”

Light could not remember the last time he felt so comfortably vulnerable. He was standing in a hallway he could not see through Clover’s eyes, completely unaware of the walls or doors, shaking in Aoi’s arms.

This was trust, he realized. Trust was breathing deep breaths without having to concentrate. Trust was closing one’s eyes and knowing the world would still be there when they opened again. Trust was a warm, special kind of love.

Aoi’s weight shifted away, or maybe it was Light’s nervous imagination. Either way, Light quickly locked his arms behind Aoi to keep him there just a little longer.

“Oh!” Akane shouted suddenly.

The boys jolted apart as if the sound of her voice reminded them they were not alone. Aoi whirled around to her, a flush rising in his face.

“Light,” she said, pointing at his hands still hovering in the air, “is your left arm…?”

He snapped it to his chest and locked his other arm over it, inhaling sharply. Aoi gave her a disappointed look, like a nagging mother, and muttered, “Jesus Christ, Akane, don’t—”

“But then it’s not your body,” she breathed. “I saw… there’s a dead body, but… but it’s got a broken arm, a broken left arm, with real bones and things. It’s… wearing your clothes… but it’s not you.”

Her eyes jittered as she held her hands to her temples, growing more and more wary and confused. Aoi crouched in front of her when he saw her hair begin to lift and twist as her fingers curled. “Hey, you okay?” he whispered.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” she whispered, just as she had before when Aoi asked her the same question behind door [4]. Now Aoi realized that it went far beyond not knowing why they were on this sinking ship, why bracelets were locked onto their wrists, why bombs were driven into their guts and they were forced to solve puzzles to save their own lives. Something was happening inside her own head that was far more mysterious than all of that.

He said the same thing to her that he said before. It was all he had, a promise that was starting to feel empty.

“I don’t know, either.” He smoothed down her disheveled hair. “Listen, I’ll keep you safe, I promise. You’ll be okay.”

He glanced up at Light’s pale face and hoped he could keep that promise for both of them.

**— FAITH —**

The silence between the two was awkward at best and grating at worst. Nobu had tried talking to Claire a little bit, keeping his voice jolly, but she just looked so confused any time something came out of his mouth. In silence, he felt the inside of the Saturn elevators for moisture before waving Claire inside. She hopped inside eagerly and spun around, taking in the intimidating interior of the cylindrical elevator as Nobu hit the button for E-Deck.

The closing doors shut out the bright lights from the central staircase. In the sudden darkness, Nobu heard her small voice say, “Ren.”

Nobu shuddered. The elevator gave a lurch as it started moving downwards. Between that and Claire’s one-word interrogation, he lost track of his stomach.

“<Yes,>” he managed to say.

It was a word he knew in English. He could show her he understood what she said, and nothing more. It was not even wholly true that he understood her—he knew not what her intent was by bringing up Ren’s name, but it had something to do with the bandages on his face and his wrist.

She hummed thoughtfully to herself, until the carriage jerked and dinged and the doors opened. Sufficiently distracted by the grimy walls and gates beyond the elevator, Claire wandered out to investigate, scanning the place over with wide eyes. Nobu was just stepping out of the elevator when she gave a gasp, pointed, and yelled, “<Six!>”

Nobu recognized the word as a number, but he could not at first remember which it was, not until he dashed to her and followed her eyes to the bright [6] at the end of the long hall.

“Another numbered door,” he exhaled. “How… how many of these _are_ there?”

He snapped out of his vacant gaze when he felt the tug on his sleeve. There was determination in Claire’s eyes as she repeated the name, “Ren.”

“What about Ren?” Nobu muttered, frowning into her stare with the hope of understanding what was going on in her little head.

“Ren… _nakama_.”

Through her accent, Nobu did not realize until she after repeated herself that the second word was Japanese. Claire had followed Ren through door [3]. She had gone there with Light, who had a strong command of both Japanese and English. She had learned Ren’s intent, the intent Ren had shyly tried to show when he offered to accompany Nobu down the elevator.

“Ren wants to be friends?” he realized.

Claire heard “Ren” and “ _nakama_ ” somewhere in Nobu’s sentence, so she nodded. “<Ren’s sorry,>” she added, speaking slowly and loudly in case it gave him a better chance of understanding her. “<Sorry.>”

Though it took him a while to remember to what common phrase it belonged, perhaps due to something like denial, Nobu recognized the word. It was hard to believe in someone who had hurt him little more than an hour ago, but Claire was twirling a four-leaf clover between her fingers under his nose. For her sake, for his own sake, for the sake of all eighteen children kidnapped and forced to play these games, he had to have faith.

**— LOVE —**

Once everyone left the hospital room, Yuuki gave the little hiccupping sobs she had been suppressing while the others could see her. She curled into a tight ball, lying on her side. She did not look at Hideyoshi, but she felt the warmth of his crossed leg against her back as he sat beside her on the thin mattress.

“What if people find out?” she whispered. “Wh-what if… what if they find out what I did?”

“They would—they’d understand,” Hideyoshi said quietly. “If—if they knew the whole story, they… they’ll still love you.”

Yuuki was not sure what she needed to be whole again, but when Hideyoshi said that, she thought it might be love.

**— LUCK —**

“Sorry,” Ren mumbled as the elevator door rumbled closed. “I know you wanted to go with Light, instead.”

Nona looked up when Ren’s little voice filled the elevator. She had fallen into her own little world—or, perhaps more accurately, into the world she shared with Ennea—when Aoi snatched away her chance to talk to Light. The fact that Ren, of all people, noticed, and even cared, maybe, made her tentatively say the words she said next.

“It’s fine,” she said with a shrug. “I didn’t really need to talk to him, I just… didn’t know who else to talk to.”

Ren had his hands stuffed into his pockets, had his eyes on his feet, and had nothing to say. Nona leaned against the railing along the back of the elevator car, curling her hands around it and squeezing as they slowly sank.

No water filled the elevator when it opened up again on the Bottom Deck. No sound filled it, either. Both hesitated, Ren longer than Nona as if waiting for her to proceed, and even after moving, their steps were tentative.

“Um…”

Nona glanced over her shoulder to find Ren holding out the hairbrush he had thrown on the ground in the casino almost hours ago. She stared at it long after recognizing it, trying to scrutinize Ren’s blank face in her peripheral vision.

“Claire… gave it back to me. Again,” he said. “I… I guess she just… thought I needed it?”

He gave a soft, breathy laugh, tucking his long hair behind his ear with a nervous hand. Strands of both red and brown hair were trapped in the bristles of the brush. His hair was not nearly as messy as it had been when the two of them first met, scared and soaked and confused and alone as they raced up the grand central staircase together, looking for a way out. Behind Ren’s ear was now a tiny braid.

“T-to—to fix your hair,” he stammered, gesturing quickly at the back of his head as a mirror. “It’s—your ponytail’s—it’s loose, if you wanna…”

Nona’s hair hung in a limp mess of its former glory after all of the pulling she had given it in the laboratory. She felt disheveled locks tickling her neck when she moved. Almost automatically, her hand lifted to accept the hairbrush.

“You can just stay here to fix it,” Ren said, wearing something on his lips that leaned towards a smile. “I’ll start looking around. I won’t go far, promise.”

She watched him dart off as she worked her fingers through the elastic holding her hair in place. Her hair fell to her shoulders all at once. She and her sister used to race each other in the morning to see who could tie the faster, tighter ponytail, but now, even though time was precious, she ran the brush slowly through her hair, contemplative, before bringing it all up and to the one side. She tilted her ponytail to the left, because she held the brush in her right and gathered the hair with her left hand. Ennea, left-handed, did the opposite.

_“You can talk to me,” Ennea whispered, her brow in a knot. “What happened? I couldn’t see.”_

Nona had entirely blocked the image of the woman in the laboratory from her transmissions to Ennea. She pulled her hair through the last loop of the hairtie and shook her head. Then, slowly, softly, subtly enough that Ennea would not feel it happening, she blocked Ennea out again.

“Hey, Nona?” Ren called, plodding back to the elevator.

She stood like a puppet with all strings cut but the one keeping her head upright. The brush hung loose in her limp hand; only the friction of her fingerprints kept it from clattering to the floor.

“If,” she began hesitantly, “if you’re trapped in a room, and… well, if you’re trapped on a boat, and you’re gonna sink if you don’t get out, but the only way to get out is…”

She trailed off. Ren waited, keeping his eyes low. But she shook her head.

“We’re supposed to be looking around,” she said. “We’ve gotta be back in ten minutes. We need to look around.”

“I, uh, I.” Ren thumbed over his shoulder at the hallway from which he had returned. “There’s nothing more to look at, I think. It’s just… Door [2]. I found door [2], right down there. That’s the only way you can go from here.”

She snapped to attention and darted around the corner to see it for herself. Small and lonely at the end of the hall, but marked in deep red with a [2], was another door. She did not want to go into any more doors.

“So, we’re done. And we still have…” Ren glanced at his wrist only to remember it was not his watch. He stuffed his hand back into his pocket. “I dunno, a little while. I mean, if… you want to…”

He leaned back towards the wall, but hit it with a thud when it was farther behind him than he had judged. He stayed slouched there, staring hard at his feet. Nona looked down, too, at the hairbrush around which she wrapped her fingers.

“If you’re trapped, and you’re gonna die,” Nona continued softly, “and the only way you get out is… you have to kill somebody.”

Ren’s jacket made a swishing noise when his shoulders slid a couple of inches along the wall. He clumsily righted himself, glanced at Nona, then turned his eyes back to the ground.

“Whose fault is it?” she whispered. “Is it self-defense, or… or are you a murderer?”

Ren wanted to ask what had happened to Yuuki. Ren did not want to ask what had happened to Yuuki.

“I mean… legally talking, it’s probably self-defense,” he finally said. His throat felt painfully dry as the air passed through it. “It’s… it’s those guys who put us here, it’s  _their_ fault. Right?”

Nona had reasoned this through, herself. Hearing someone else agree with her did not help as much as she had hoped it would. Someone, a person, a group of ordinary people, had written a whole set of rules called _law_  that worked out every scenario and assigned the blame accordingly, and by that system, perhaps Yuuki was guiltless. But Yuuki was the one who flipped the switch that killed a woman. And Nona had perhaps done something even more heinous.

“What if it was _me_?” Nona breathed.

The same question rolled around Ren’s head with an entirely different meaning. With another combination of bracelets, the murderer—or self-defender—could have been any one of the children. In Nona’s room, it was Yuuki only by chance, by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Does that make us… we’re _all_ guilty?” Ren uttered. “It was… it was just _luck_ that it was her and not us, right? Any of us would’ve done the same thing. We’d have to. We’d _try_.”

“ _No!_ She wasn’t _going_ to!”

Nona did not know why her voice had gotten so loud all of a sudden, but she could not bring it back in, even when Ren gave a start and backed away from her, his eyes wide with fright.

“She didn’t want to do it!” Nona shouted. “But I— _I_ told her to! I told her what to do, and I _knew_ what would happen, and it ki—it killed—it…”

Ren opened his arms just a little bit to the sides, his shoulders back. He swallowed, and his lips were tight, but his eyes went deep. It was such a small shift, the way his palms turned towards her and his fingers relaxed, but it transformed him in her mind’s eye. He was no longer a volatile, detached, fourteen-year-old boy. He was a friend, a confidante, an awkward child with a heart of gold underneath all of the brittle layers, who wanted to help even when he did not always know how.

The last string holding her upright was cut. She collapsed onto his shoulder and cried.

 

* * *

 

Ren and Nona were the last to return, but all made it back to the hospital room almost within Aoi’s ten minutes, and certainly within his fifteen. Light just nodded when they reported the last of the doors discovered. Yuuki, on the other hand, shot to her feet.

“Door [2]?” she repeated urgently. Her hand shot back to the bed when her knees wobbled from the shock of suddenly holding her body upright, but she stayed standing. “I—I’m going into door [2]. I wanna go into door [2].”

It was after a brief glance to his sister that Aoi gave Yuuki a skeptical look. “How come?” he asked.

Her face went red, and her next words burst from her lips with frustrated rage. “What do you _mean_ , ‘how come’?!” She thrust a wavering finger in Akane’s direction. “ _She_ gets to pick what door to go through every time!”

“Everyone, please, don’t shout,” Light sighed, a disappointed furrow in his brow. “Yuuki can pick door [2] if she likes. Even if Akane would like to also go through door [2], we can easily have them go together, if Claire accompanies them.”

Nona jerked her head towards Light. “But you and Claire have to go together,” she pointed out.

“There is exactly one combination this round that will allow the two of us to enter the same door,” Light said softly, “and that is if Akane wishes to accompany the two of us through door [6].”

The math was coming faster to the children, partially because now each of the bracelet numbers had become like their second names. Light and Claire’s combined digital root was [1]. To go through door [1], they would need to add [9] to preserve the digital root, but [9] was Claire’s number. To go through door [2], they would need to add [1], but [1] was Light’s number. The only possibility that remained was to add Akane’s [5] to bring their digital root to [6].

“Therefore, if Akane needs to go through door [2],” Light continued, “it’s a bit of a moot point to try keeping the two of us together. Claire should accompany them.”

He gave a defeated shrug and turned to Akane, who had stayed close to his side ever since having her mysterious vision in front of the number [1] door.

“Which door would you like to go through, Akane?” he asked.

She pressed her first knuckle to her lips and stared into space, concentrating on something unseen. “Looks like she ain’t decided yet,” Aoi muttered.

“Why are we waiting on her?” Nona whined, her fingers curling and uncurling. “I get it, she needs to go a certain way or she doesn’t see the other puzzles. But if she doesn’t go with you and Claire into door [6], then neither of you can see the puzzles. That’s sacrificing two people’s vision for one, and—and one of them is _you_ , Light. You’re really good at this. We _need_ you, if you can help.”

“Claire, too,” Ren mumbled. “I mean, she needs you for language stuff, right, but… she’s really good at this psychic stuff, too. I can’t even speak English and I could tell.”

“So can we just tell Akane she has to go in door [6]?” Nona said. “Then if Yuuki wants door [2], we could—”

“Door [1],” Akane murmured.

A few seconds passed in silence. Aoi clenched his fists in his pockets to keep them from flying in the face of anyone who told his sister she could not go where she needed to go.

“Akane,” said Light gently, placing a hand on her shoulder.

It was even harder for Aoi to keep his hands in his pockets than he thought it would be, with Light standing in his sister’s way.

“Would you be alright going with me and Claire into door [6] instead?” he suggested. “She and I will be able to guide you.”

Akane gasped and her whole body shook as if made of paper, about to blow away if the winds of fate were unkind. “No,” she pleaded in a tiny voice. “I _have_ to go in door [1]. I have to help him.”

Aoi’s blood felt cold when the hot words, “Help who?” left his chest.

“I have to help him,” she repeated, even softer.

Light turned his head the other way, to Aoi. “I’m willing to take this gamble if you are,” he said. “With the combination you originally proposed.”

Nona’s eyes went wide when she summed up the bracelets between the three of them. “By yourselves?” she gasped. “But—but none of you—”

“We’re takin’ the gamble,” Aoi snapped to cut her off. He had a feeling she would figure out who he was to Akane, but he was not ready for everyone else in the room to have that knowledge, especially not if cameras were sending their every word to the men in charge of this twisted experiment.

“Then Aoi, Akane, and I will be going through door [1]. Please don’t concern yourselves with our success,” Light stated. “The rest of you should sort out your own groups, keeping Yuuki in door [2] at her request, please. I’ll go ahead and tell Claire that she will be going into door [6], since the math prevents otherwise in the present configuration, you’ll find.”

His words shifted to English. Claire brightened up and came closer, while the other children quickly settled themselves into two groups by mathematical fate. Hideyoshi had worked out quickly that he could accompany Yuuki into door [2] by bringing along Ren, although he did not realize it was their only remaining option until Nona tried to consider other possibilities and found none. Nobu nodded to Nona and beamed as he waited for Claire to finish nodding at Light. Nona squirmed in her shoes. She knew little of the psychic capabilities of the children who had selected door [2], but she knew that neither Hideyoshi nor Yuuki had any confidence in theirs. Their success very likely relied on Ren.

Aoi kept his ear on Light’s English. He understood a few essential pieces—the “<you’ll be alright>” just before Nobu’s and Nona’s names, the emphatic “< _I_ >” said somewhere near “<have a problem>”, the self-deprecating laughter as he ended a sentence with “<see>.”

“<You’ll be alright,>” Aoi cut in, clapping a hand on Light’s shoulder. “<He be… he is alright. I help to see. Alright?>”

It took Light several minutes to put a name to the sudden, novel feeling lifting his cheeks and trickling something warm into his chest, because it was hard to admit that he was, in fact, charmed. He thought he had picked a rather insufferable partner at the beginning of the game—he should have guessed by the first or second or thirteenth profanity Aoi spat so shortly after meeting the others—but knowing that this strong will was now fighting for his sake was comforting beyond words.

“Remember, everybody look out for keys with those weird symbols on ’em, we might need ’em later,” Aoi barked as he waved them out of the hospital room. “Almost one o’clock. We still got over five hours left. We’re gonna be just fine. Let’s do this.”


	10. Door [2]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been two and a half months since the last chapter and this list of common triggers found in this chapter might tell you why it took so long:  
> \- homophobia, with slurs  
> \- gore/body horror (kids are not physically harmed!!!)  
> \- emeto  
> \- mentions of abusive electroshock therapy, specifically in the context of "conversion therapy"  
> \- suicidal thoughts
> 
> Also the fact that it was over 9000 words? That also made it take two and a half months, probably.
> 
> Also industrial equipment. Listen, just. If you want a scapegoat, a physical entity to blame for this writing drought I just went through over this past month or so, kick a bulldozer in my honor. You don't understand. You can't understand. They are creatures created with evil and terribly organized billing systems.
> 
> Anyway. This chapter has a lot of sad, but there's a happy ending, so. Stick with me. Thanks. I love you.

After signing my disciplinary notice without even reading it, Mom looked me straight in the black eye with a blank look on her face and said, “Your birthday’s coming up. Do you want me to get you some new clothes?”

She’s spent my whole life pretending things are normal even when the world is falling out from underneath us. I guess that’s where I get it from.

“I don’t need anything,” I mumbled as the sudden rush of blood in my ears muffled the sound of the outside world. “Aiko’s are fine.”

“Baby, you’re getting taller than Aiko. And you’re a _boy_ , for heaven’s sake. You shouldn’t have to wear your big sister’s old clothes. You deserve better than that.”

She sighed and held her face in her hands, gazing off into space with sad eyes that told me she was blaming herself for being a bad parent again. I wanted to tell her I loved her and everything was fine and she was doing her best on her own and I knew it, but a teenager who hasn’t yet figured out that the reason their finger hurts so much is because they broke their knuckle punching Takashi in the nose doesn’t really have the temperament to get those kinds of feelings out of their mouth.

When the base of my finger went from a black and blue spot to a huge, purple lump overnight, I figured out it was broken. The new Cradle Children’s Clinic made room for me on the schedule. Mom’s every breath came out on a sigh, not because she had to call out of work unexpectedly for this and her next paycheck would take a hit, but because shouldn’t she have noticed this yesterday, shouldn’t she have asked me if I was hurt, wasn’t it her fault that I got hurt in the first place because somehow she didn’t raise me right, didn’t the infraction report say the fight started because Takashi called me a homo, wasn’t it all her fault because she couldn’t afford clothes for both of us and I had to wear my sister’s hand-me-downs because we were poor because she divorced my emotionally unavailable father when I was little and then I didn’t have a strong male role model in my life and now I was a queer.

Technically, I think I _am_ gay, I guess, if I’m right about something else. But she doesn’t need to know that. Nobody needs to know that. I can pretend everything’s normal.

The doctor gave a skeptical look at my medical records and told Mom I was overdue for vaccinations. Every sentence she spoke after that had a “sorry” somewhere in it, even when he told her, over and over, that she could schedule an appointment for Aiko and I together as part of their special youth health program, it would be quick and easy and there were plenty of times available even within the next couple of weeks.

She must’ve told the doctors about my “behavioral issues” behind my back at some point, because after they stuck us both with three or four different needles each, a thin man with a cold smile led me away from Aiko for “a special therapy session.”

I swear I could _feel_ the fluorescent lights of those white halls pressing against me, crushing my body as I tried to follow him. My heart was in my throat somehow, and it was out of control. Each clack of his footsteps was a punch to my ears; each squeak of my sneakers was like a knife inside them. It felt like a gust of wind could knock down these walls and the whole building would collapse on me. I was walking towards Pandora’s box, and I could not yet decide whether I wanted to open it.

I knew, from late nights of deleted browser history, that therapy was the first step of how I could fix this. If I got therapy, I could get a letter, and then I could go to doctors who could change what was happening to me. I read about it hundreds of times to indulge the fantasy. I always did nothing, because the first step to actually getting into therapy was telling my mom why I needed to go to therapy. Like I said, she didn’t need to know that.

But here I was, in therapy by chance. I could tell the whole truth, the reason the new roughness of my personality was directly correlated with the new roughness of my falling voice. Everything would change. School would get even worse. Mom would blame herself for what I’d become, like this was some kind of disease brought on by parental neglect instead of a child’s reaction to an arbitrarily rigid world.

Maybe she wouldn’t blame herself. Maybe she’d just be so, so disappointed.

“I’d like you to tell me about yourself,” he said as he made the preparations. “About your sister, as well, if you could. Tell me anything that comes to mind.”

About my sister.

_Aiko had hair so long it weighed down her head, but she loved the way it tickled her neck, her shoulders, even down to the backs of her thighs if she tilted her head back. She wore shorts and skirts whenever she could, with knee socks or thigh-highs if it was a little too chilly, and she would tilt her head back just to feel it against her skin._

I’d tell her to do it, too, sometimes. I told her it was because she looked funny. Dress code wouldn’t let me grow my hair longer than my shoulders, but at least I had this window into what it would be like.

The goggles and the white noise blocking everything out made it all feel so anonymous. My mouth went cold and dry as I inhaled to speak, and I froze there for a moment, trying to think of how to start, how to explain what I was feeling.

“I feel like… like I’m a girl.”

I heard nothing, saw nothing. I wanted a reaction to gauge. I wanted to know if it was safe to keep talking, if the man was listening, understanding.

“I… sometimes I just… I’ll look down at myself and,” I said hoarsely, “I don’t… _recognize_ myself, almost. Like when my head’s up, and I’m not saying anything, I just—I think I’m a girl. Everything feels like _girl_. And then I speak or I look down and my voice is—and my—my body’s not _girl_ -shaped, so… so what’s happening to me?”

That question hung in the silence surrounding me for a long while. It was my last plea, my only hope: that even when all the signs lined up with one explanation that I felt in my heart was the answer to my years of confusion, maybe there was some other explanation for it, some medical anomaly that a drug could fix and I could be a normal boy again, a straight boy, who liked girls because he wanted to kiss them instead of because he thought they were so beautiful it made him hurt with jealousy, who looked at their clothes in online catalogues pretending he had a body he could dress in them, who wanted to cover himself in their hair and makeup and soft skin, who resonated so strongly with his sister’s sheer luck at being born a girl that he started deluding himself into thinking he could feel what she was feeling sometimes so that he could abandon his own life and vicariously live hers.

“What’s happening to me?” I whispered again, begging.

They brought me to another specialist or somebody, some Mr. Hongou, a man with a smile that would have felt warm were it not strangely quivering with excitement. “What you are experiencing is called _morphic resonance_ ,” he explained, his words slow and emphatic, but shaking with that same barely controlled energy. “My team of researchers is studying this phenomenon. Would you like to participate in a short experiment? You may be able to help us understand more about how it works, what causes it, and so on.”

In retrospect, this whole misunderstanding was kind of funny. I wonder if any other transgender girls with sisters and severe body dysphoria came up as a false positive on their diagnostic sessions.

He gave me the first test question and told me to solve it with help from my sister. It was something about figuring out a family’s drink preferences based on the hints they told the bartender, kind of like a logic puzzle, except you obviously weren’t supposed to count the son’s hints, those were lies.

Why weren’t you supposed to count the son’s hints?

I reread the brain teaser. Nowhere did it say that anyone was lying. But here I was, starting to write out the answers based on only the clues from the mother and the father. The puzzle didn’t even make sense if the son was telling the truth. It became impossible to answer.

I could never really tell when I was connected with Aiko. It all kind of ran together.

“Ren,” said Mr. Hongou when he read my response, “is there anything you are… afraid of?”

I didn’t miss a beat. “If my mom knew about any of this,” I mumbled, sitting on my hands.

“Ren, I have one more exam I’d like for you to take,” he said, pulling out another page of the test. “If you and your sister do not answer this _quickly_ , then your mother will start to wonder what’s taking so long, and I’ll have to explain to her everything you’ve told us today. Do you understand?”

Everything I’d told them. The parts where I said my body felt like a girl’s. They’d tell her I was sneaking into Aiko’s mind, and she would tell Aiko, and Aiko would hate me, and maybe she’d try to get away from me and keep me out somehow, and I’d never be able to feel what it’s like to be a girl again.

_There was this feeling she got when winter turned to spring, when the pollen of cherry blossoms filled the air and fogged up her head. It was still too chilly for skirts and short sleeves but she wore them anyway, feeling the soft fabric light as a feather against her body, feeling her skin touch the outside world: the cool air, the grass when she sat outside for lunch, the walls she leaned against, her long, long hair. The world was exhilarating, almost dizzying, for those first few days of spring. She looked up at the bright blue sky and felt more like a girl than ever before._

I stole those memories from her as my climbing fears made the words on the page start running together into incomprehensible nonsense. For what I worried was the last time in my life, I desperately peered into Aiko’s head and grabbed every moment of girlhood I could take with me.

Mixed up with the memories were the missing keywords and clues to the answers on the exam. I couldn’t answer everything before my time was up, but I had scrawled out most of the answer to the third question and the complete solution for the first. With wide eyes, I gazed up pitifully at the man behind the dinging timer, hoping this would be enough to satisfy him.

Hongou’s lip twitched with disappointment. He folded his arms. “You understand what I have to do now, don’t you?” he said in a rumbling voice. “Your mother will need an explanation for this.”

I didn’t even have the strength to argue. My head felt so stuffed full of a stinking haze that it had grown heavier on my shoulders. Pandora’s box was open. I wasn’t even a girl after all. I was just some kind of fucking freak.

If not for the jittery behavior of the doctor with the unkempt hair and the crooked glasses running up to Hongou, I might have missed the conversation happening in front of me during my walk of shame back to the lobby. “Y-y-you can’t disclose the information,” he stammered, holding up his hands as if trying to stop the man twice his size by simply standing in front of him.

“It’s not confidential,” Hongou stated, marching on. “They’re minors.”

The tiny doctor walked backwards in front of him, shrinking into his white coat as he kept his hands raised, though they were beginning to shake and curl with deference. “I-i-it’s going to jeopardize the reputation of the company,” he protested. “Sh-Sheldrake’s r-r-research is… I-i-it’s widely regarded as ps-pseudoscientific by the m-m-mainstream scientific c-c-co—”

“If I don’t follow through on a warning,” Hongou growled, “then there is no real threat. This is integral to the experiment.”

The little man balled his hands into fists and shoved them down by his side, wearing a face that would maybe look angry if there weren’t still so much fear in it. “C- _consent_ is integral to the experiment!” he hissed. “You won’t _have_ an experiment if you have no subjects because their guardians force them to withdraw!”

In that moment, in Hongou, I saw everything I hated about being a man. There was the anger, and the way the anger was amplified by that deep voice and enormous strength, the way it made him a power to be feared instead of an equal. It was that entitlement, that unquestioning need to have everything he desired simply because he wanted it, maybe didn’t even ask for it.

He didn’t tell my mom about it. It didn’t stop me from having a panic attack all the way home, where I brought my heels up to the edge of my seat on the train ride home, squishing my ears between my knees and holding my hands to my face as I wondered when I’d be able to cry. Mom and Aiko just talked about school and stuff. Ignoring problems was what kept our family together.

Mom forgot about the follow-up appointment they had pressured her to schedule for us next week. Aiko remembered, but she didn’t want to go, so she said nothing. I said nothing, too, even though there was so much I still wanted to know about what was happening to me. It was just easier to ignore. Ignore everything.

So I’m just a boy. Whatever. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. No one cares.

Soon as my finger healed up I broke it again fighting one of Takashi’s friends because he pulled my hair.

 

* * *

 

Yuuki stiffened her lip and balled her hands into fists, rubbing her knuckles against her eyes when they tried to trickle out more tears. Although Ren was the only one who knew where he was going, she held herself in the lead. What little of her world she could return to her control, she would, for that little comfort it brought her battered psyche. On top of that, she needed to be the first in line to find that which she was promised beyond this door.

She planted her hand on the scanner panel and tried not to jump when the beep, louder than she remembered, echoed against the iron walls. Over her shoulder, she threw the most determined glare she could muster at her two companions.

Ren headed for the panel, his gaze flinching away from her stony face. Hideyoshi held fast to her eyes, unmoving. “Why did you want to go into door [2] so bad?” he asked.

She saw the face of a woman doomed to die. She felt a phantom whisper touch her ear, sending a shudder down her spine and a sickness through her crawling skin.

She tried to tell him to shut up, but all of the breath in her lungs wanted to scream. The force of the cry leaving her chest, consonants tumbling messily through the sound, bent her in half. She crossed her arms around herself and gripped her shoulders hard enough to rip them off of her own body. As she doubled over, her wild stare snagged on the lever by the door. She wrenched herself in two directions—drawn to the scanner by the instinct to flee, but dragged to the floor by grief. The scratch of two hands with unkempt fingernails pulled her in a third direction.

“Yuuki, wait, stop,” Ren pleaded.

The disjointed motion threw her legs into a tangle on the floor in front of the door. When she had writhed and thrashed into such a twist that Ren was sure she would not be getting up again, he switched his focus from holding her back to prying her vise-like fingers off of her shoulders.

“Hideyoshi didn’t scan his bracelet yet,” he mumbled. “You can’t pull the lever.”

“ _Then hurry up!_ ” she shrieked, kicking her legs out like a child in a tantrum.

“Yuuki!”

Ren half-vaulted over her shoulders to spin himself to her front, holding her hands on her shoulders, and looking directly in her eyes with what he hoped was something resolute, rather than quaking with fear.

“Aoi’s right. We’re making good time,” he said in a hushed voice. “We don’t need to rush.”

“We’ve got five hours left, and,” Hideyoshi added, “and—and now we’ve seen every door but [9]. So—so now we—we just have to get through these doors, and—and…”

“I think…” Ren swallowed, and started again. “I _really_ think we’re gonna be okay. We’re not gonna drown.”

There was no reason to raise such a fuss, not unless Yuuki confronted the real reason she was so upset. She acknowledged it in the pit of her stomach for a moment, one in which she was sure the boat must have swayed underneath her, it left her so dizzy.

“I just wanna get out of here,” she whimpered. “I wanna get out of here right _now_.”

It was a little far removed from _I’m scared_ , but it was closer than she had ever let see anyone before.

Hideyoshi reached for the scanner to enter the final asterisk. “You—you ready?” he asked, his hand hovering near the lever.

Ren held his hands in front of Yuuki. She hesitated before taking them. She was a thirteen-year-old girl, after all, and it now occurred to her that he looked like a boy of about the same age, and there are consequences of two such young adults interacting in such a way—implications, if not ramifications. In a way, it was as though she had never noticed he was a boy until this moment, and it now seemed jarring, almost discordant, that he was.

“Yuuki?” he asked, with a glance back at Hideyoshi.

She jerked her head into a nod, glaring at the floor. “Let’s  _go_.”

The stink of brackish saltwater grew thicker when they passed through the number [2] door and came into another dank hallway. As soon as the trio authenticated their bracelets at the DEAD, Yuuki and Hideyoshi both began to tear through the room in earnest, but in very different manners.

Hideyoshi was taking inventory. The third of the unlocked rooms was dark, so they would have to come back to it later once they had figured out how to light it, or how to use the narrow shaft of light illuminating the ambient dust. This drawer was locked in place with large screws drilled into the surface of the desk. This other drawer was unlocked, but had a mismatched knob attached precariously by a single screw. Therefore, one of his primary goals was to find a screwdriver.

Yuuki, on the other hand, was ransacking the place. While Hideyoshi turned away from the dark room almost instantly, Yuuki felt around in the dark for anything she could find. She gripped the knobs and edges of the locked drawers with all of the strength her little fingers could muster. Failing that, she ordered Ren to try in her stead.

“What makes you think I’ll be able to open it if you couldn’t?” Ren mumbled.

Ren’s strategy in a puzzle room was very different from both Yuuki’s and Hideyoshi’s. He wandered about aimlessly, with no confidence in his own ability to find anything useful, waiting for someone to tell him how to make himself useful. When Yuuki started bossing him around, it was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

“You’re a boy, aren’t you?” Yuuki retorted.

Ren’s lip twitched. “What’s that supposed to mean,” he muttered.

“Aren’t you?” she asked again.

Ren tugged harder at the drawer. His grimace grew.

Yuuki let out a nasty giggle. “Oh, my God, are you a boy or _not_?”

“What, are you blind?!” he snapped over his shoulder, throwing his hands from the drawer. “Are there _two_ blind kids on this fucking ship? Are you fucking deaf, too?!”

“What’re you so mad about?” Yuuki shot back, clenching her hands into fists.

“Nothing!” he shouted.

“Then why are you yelling?!”

“ _You’re_ yelling!”

“Because you were yelling first!”

“Why are you _like_ this?!” Ren groaned, threading his fingers through his hair at his scalp. “We’re just trying to get off this boat. We’re _all_ just trying to get off this fucking boat and live. Why do you have to—you just go around pushing buttons, and starting shit, and yelling at people, and—!”

She wrinkled her nose and squared her stance. “ _You_ started it! You started yelling at _me_!” she protested. “Where do you get off, telling _me_ off for—for s-starting stuff?! You punched Nobu in the face for no reason!”

“You’re lucky I didn’t punch _you_ instead!”

“You _wouldn’t_! You can’t hit a girl!”

“Why not?!” Ren threw his hands in the air. “ _You_ hit a girl! You hit Claire!”

Yuuki’s face gave a twist that Ren might have recognized as regret had he been able to hold her eye contact without seething. “ _I’m_ a girl,” she said. “And you’re a boy, aren’t you?”

They were back where they started. Ren still did not answer the question.

He trudged out of the dark room with his teeth clenched, just in time to catch a glimpse of Hideyoshi re-entering the first room in the set of three with an assembled screwdriver dangling from his little hand. Ren chose the second room to go sulk in.

Yuuki followed him.

As he tore the dusty, threadbare sheets off of the bed to see if anything would tumble out of them, she lingered by the desk, its drawer already removed and disassembled by Hideyoshi’s efforts. “I didn’t mean to… I shouldn’t’ve hit her,” she eventually mumbled to break the ringing silence. “I was just…”

“Then tell _her_ you’re sorry,” Ren said. “It’s ‘ <I’m sorry>’ in English. Tell her.”

She shot a glare at his back. “ _You_ tell _Nobu_ you’re sorry.”

Ren flinched. “I—I was gonna, but Aoi made us—”

She crossed her arms and stomped to the other side of the room. “And—and I was gonna tell Claire.”

“You weren’t.”

“I _was_!”

“Yuuki, you were curled up on a mattress, crying your eyes out. You weren’t saying anything to anybody like that,” Ren stated. “And now you’re just… I can’t… I can’t fucking figure you out. Are you… okay?”

Ren was never any good with holding eye contact, especially not with other girls. Despite that, he held his gaze to Yuuki’s face, searching in earnest for the truth behind her tight-lipped mask. Under the pressure of his stare, she glanced away.

“Uh, the sink’s overflowing,” he said, pointing limply behind her.

At the same time that she first noticed the sound of running water, Yuuki became aware of the feel of dirt, dust, and rust in a stripe along her palm from when she had turned on the faucet and let it run. The basin was starting to fill up now, as though the water had hit a clogged pipe. The sight of it made her freeze up. After a beat of inaction, Ren darted in to shut off the flow himself.

“What’re you even _doing_?” Ren forced his whole weight into twisting the rusty knob all the way off. “Trying to rip open drawers. Turning on sinks and leaving them running. Are you just trying to trash this place?”

“I’m… I’m just looking for stuff,” she said. “The key.”

Ren rolled his eyes, peering up into the mouth of the faucet. “You thought the key was gonna come out of the sink?”

“Sh-shut up! I don’t…”

She did not know why she had turned on the sink. Worse, she did not know why she had taken the drawer knob from the desk, forced it onto the faucet, and used it to turn on the sink. It had been an unconscious act sometime in the foggy midst of an argument over nothing.

“Anyway.” Ren huffed out a sigh as he brushed off his hands on the thighs of his jeans. “Let’s just… solve the puzzle, right? We’ve been through enough of these rooms by now to figure out there’s no easy way out.”

Yuuki folded her arms a little too tightly at that last phrase: _no easy way out_.

“Maybe Hideyoshi’s found some stuff, yeah?” Ren set the sheets back in order on the bed out of habit, then turned his head over his shoulder. “Yuuki?”

“I don’t wanna solve anymore puzzles.”

Ren’s shoulders fell. His eyes hooked on every point of tension in Yuuki’s thin, rigid body. “Yeah,” he sighed. “I know.”

Her whole body gave a sudden jerk, and she whipped her head around to glare at him. “You _don’t_ know!” she shot back. “You didn’t—!”

“No, I mean—I know _you_ don’t want to. I’m okay.” He waved a hand at the bed. “You don’t have to keep doing this right now. If you wanna just sit down a little while, Hideyoshi and I can probably do this part ourselves. I dunno if that makes it any better, but… if you need a break, I guess.”

It was not that he did not expect her to take his suggestion. It was more that he did not expect her to take it so quickly, or to not put up a fight. After only a beat, she lumbered to the bed and fell to her seat, still clutching her elbows across her chest. It was an open confession. She was not okay. She was defeated.

So his eyes lingered on her a little too long, filling with pity, until she snapped at him, “What’s your problem?”

He took a seat beside her, planting one hand a little ways behind her and resting the other in his lap, so that he was angled towards her, but at a comfortable distance. Aiko always said he was good at knowing when someone needed a hug, and even better at letting them know without words that he was willing to give it.

Yuuki fell against his shoulder. He eased into holding her with one arm, then both, then squeezing so tightly it wrung the tears out of her eyes.

“You’re not… like a boy,” she whispered.

She did not say anything more for a while, long enough for Ren to muster the courage to ask, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Yuuki hesitated. “You’re nice,” she mumbled.

“You never met a nice boy before?”

“No,” she said firmly.

Ren sighed. “Yeah. Me neither.”

At the first creak of the door, Ren jumped to his feet, blocking Yuuki’s face from view, and stared intently at the corners of the ceiling, for clues. Hideyoshi burst in none the wiser, holding yet another wooden drawer under one arm and a small, white tile between his thumb and forefinger.

“H-hey,” he said, “I found this—this—thanks for—for doing the water thing. I got this out of the other sink.”

Ren stared into the flooded sink, then down at Yuuki. She was too busy frantically wiping the last of her tears from her eyes to notice.

“It—it kinda looks important,” Hideyoshi said, rolling the points of the tile against the pads of his fingertips, “so—so if you see anymore…”

“Yeah.” Ren stepped away from the bed with a nod. “You and I’re gonna take care of the rest of this.”

Behind his glasses, Hideyoshi’s eyes widened. He craned his neck to peer around Ren for a glimpse of Yuuki. He paused for only a moment. By the time Yuuki raised her head, Hideyoshi had shoved the drawer under his arm into the empty desk. When he pulled the drawer back out again, there lay another white tile.

Hideyoshi was not a particularly good receiver. Without the clue of the paintings on the mirrors and the towel that connected them, he had not been able to figure out that turning on the faucet in one room would make the water pool in the other. But he was very good at solving puzzles. At present, it was the one thing he felt worthwhile doing, to perhaps relieve Yuuki’s burden.

He found himself at a standstill after this point, however, because the remaining steps were obscured in this version of the puzzle. After scouring the rooms again, he came to this conclusion himself, beseeching the help of his companions.

“I can’t—I never can—I don’t know what’s going on over there,” Hideyoshi said, his eyes on Ren when they were not on his own feet. “I’m not—I’m not…”

“ _I’m_ not psychic,” Yuuki said. She had not moved from the bed. “I’ve never done this psychic stuff like you guys. I don’t even know why I’m here.”

Ren glanced at the sink, inhaled to speak, but let it out as a sigh instead of bothering to start another argument.

“Weren’t we supposed to split everyone up so we had somebody good at this stuff in every group?” Yuuki grumbled, looking at the second-rate psychics who filled this room. “This is all that girl’s fault. Akane. All because she wanted to go _her_ way. Then Light and Claire couldn’t go together, and now…”

“If—if Light and Claire went together, then they had to go with Akane, into door [6],” Hideyoshi pointed out. “So—so it wouldn’t change anything. All—all three of them would—together, and then Nona would—she wouldn’t be able to go into door [2] with you—the math doesn’t—and—and—and nobody else is—is…”

“Why can’t _you_ figure this psychic stuff out, Hideyoshi?” Yuuki demanded. “You’re smart, aren’t you? Everything just comes easy to you. You’re just like my brother.”

“Not—not—not everything,” Hideyoshi mumbled. “I can’t… I don’t know how to… I just—just don’t even know _how_ to…”

“Get used to it.” Yuuki crossed her arms and glared at the floor. “That’s how it’s gonna be when you get older. You’re still in elementary school, aren’t you? Middle school’s not like that. It’s not so easy anymore, and _then_ you’ll be in trouble. You’ll see.”

Hideyoshi gave her a confused frown, but she was glaring at nothing. No one spoke for a little while. They turned their attention inwards, trying to listen for answers from their brothers and sisters.

“Um.” Hideyoshi’s voice was so soft, it was almost a whisper, yet it still pierced the silence. “I… I hear… I don’t think this is a—a psychic thing, I just—I hear…”

“Yeah, I hear it, too,” Ren muttered, glancing towards the open door.

Holding their breaths, they tiptoed to the doorway, peering into the hall as they waited for the sound to touch their ears again.  It was faint, but it came again every few seconds: a muted sound like the soft growl of a great beast.

Hideyoshi trailed the noise, his steps slow and uncertain at first. On the opposite side of the hall, by the DEAD, was a fourth cell door, but this one did not open, nor did it have a keyhole in sight. Hideyoshi’s hand slowly drifted up to the doorknob, but it still would not turn.

“Is it coming from there?” Yuuki asked from a safe distance away.

“I… I think so,” Hideyoshi said. “It—it sounds like…”

He was cut off by the sound of a flushing toilet. It came from behind Yuuki, whose noise wrinkled in disgust at the sound. Ren stood holding the cord, staring up at where it was connected to the ceiling.

“What’re you doing?” Yuuki demanded.

“I’m helping,” Ren said, flushing the toilet a second time.

By the time the second flush finished, Hideyoshi had darted back to the room. “I—I checked the toilets already,” he protested. “I—I—I flushed them, I looked to see if there was anything inside, I—I…”

Eyes closed, Ren said nothing, and tugged on the cord a third time.

Hideyoshi’s eyes went wide. “R-Ren, are… are _you_ psychic?”

“I…” Ren swallowed and waited for the noise of the third flush to die down before quietly saying, “I think I’m the wrong kind.”

After a beat of hesitation, Yuuki and Hideyoshi stepped back into the room, warily coming closer to Ren. “What do you mean, the wrong kind?” Yuuki asked.

“You know how…” With a grimace, Ren tugged on the string again, buying time to assemble the words. “Y’know how Light said everyone here can hear stuff from everyone in Building Q, but not the other way around?”

“But not Nona,” Hideyoshi interjected.

“Not Nona,” Ren repeated. “Maybe… Maybe I’m kinda like Nona. Just, a lot worse. I hear stuff from my sister, yeah, but barely, and I can’t control it. But when I have to tell _her_ something…”

Ren was flushing the toilet to drown out the background sound of her own thoughts, which were echoes of Yuuki telling her that she was not a boy and giddy electricity.

_His_ own thoughts. Yuuki told _him_ that _he_ was not a boy. And he _was_ a boy, obviously. He had to keep his head straight if he was going to let Aiko see it.

_Aiko peered at the three tiles Hideki held out in his hands. Just beyond that, she saw the gaping mouth of the empty desk drawer. Out of the blue, she knew where to find the fourth tile, and how._

The toilet flushed for the seventh time. Something clicked.

“I just did it again,” Ren said, throwing his hand away from the cord. “Any time I need to send her something, I just think about it, and she’s got it. I know she’s got it. I’m—I think I’m supposed to be—what if I’m supposed to be in Building Q? What if I’m the kid who can send things, and my sister’s the one who can—?”

He jumped at the sound of the door slamming shut. When he looked up, Hideyoshi had vanished. Yuuki did not seem to notice.

“You can send stuff to your sister?” Yuuki took a half-step closer. “You can _control_ it?”

Ren’s shoulders shot up to his ears. “I—I mean—maybe,” he said, scratching his head. “I didn’t know I could, until I—just—today, every time I try, it’s just—”

Hideyoshi burst back into the room, holding a white tile up. “We have to flush the other toilet!” he cried. “How many—Ren, how many times do we—do we have to flush the other toilet?”

Ren stared blankly at the boy.

“I’ll just—I’ll just flush it until I hear something again, maybe,” Hideyoshi decided, and then he darted back out of the room.

Yuuki and her stony gaze stayed put in front of Ren. “You’re psychic both ways,” she said.

“Yeah, but I can’t control when I hear her,” Ren protested. “I didn’t even know I was… Like you were with the sink. You just kind of… feel it. You don’t realize you’re hearing it.”

Her eyes went wide as they shot to the faucet.

“I’m about as good a psychic as you,” Ren muttered.

“No! No, listen, you’re _better_!” Yuuki said, stomping her foot. “How do you know she’s hearing what you’re sending, huh? Light said you guys aren’t even supposed to know you’re sending all this stuff. So how come you know? Do you just _feel_ it? Maybe you don’t realize you’re _hearing_ it, huh?”

“Sure, yeah, I guess!” Ren shouted, only because Yuuki was starting to raise her voice, too.

“So you know you can _hear_ her when you’re _sending_ her stuff!” she said. “C’mon, just keep doing it! Send her stuff nonstop so you can always hear her!”

The color faded from Ren’s face before her eyes. His knees sank a little before he staggered to keep himself upright. Just as she opened her mouth to say something more, Hideyoshi burst back into the room, announcing that he had unlocked the door in the hallway.

“You found the key?” Yuuki demanded. “Where? Was it—”

“N-no, it was just a puzzle, with the—the tiles,” he explained, beckoning them to the exit. “It was hexadecimal, I think—I got the idea from Light, when—in the first rooms, there was—there was a puzzle with…”

Tuning out of Hideyoshi’s ramblings, Yuuki glanced over her shoulder. Ren followed at a close distance, but his face remained white, and the sight of the next room did no favors for his complexion.

It was easy to believe that the numbers on the doors were written with a dark red paint. The younger ones in the group were too naïve to notice the uneven texture and color, the splatter and drip in the strokes that suggested it was perhaps not an artificial pigment. The older ones saw it as, if anything, a dumb trick to scare children. There was too much of it, and it was intentionally drawn, so even if it was blood, it was likely something like cow’s or pig’s blood, purchased from a slaughterhouse. Even if it was human blood, it was probably just taken from a blood bank.

This blood was old enough to have gone brown and crusty. This blood was half-wiped off of surfaces and stained into fabrics. This blood was caked onto the sharp tips of strange tools that only matched one another when they were all laid on a bloodstained sheet over a table beside an electric chair. This blood was drawn from humans trapped inside this room.

Hideyoshi breathed out a soft “ew” when he pushed his glasses back up his flat nose and took in all of the ugly details. A blend of youthful naïveté and scientific detachment allowed him to walk inside the room with only that small sound of hesitation. Ren and Yuuki took longer to follow.

After Hideyoshi checked the door across the room and confirmed it was locked, they inevitably congregated near the chair. It stood in the center of the room, its back too tall and too straight, with cables feeding into it from the ceiling. The open clamps for the head, ankles, and knees would not be identifiable if not for the locked manacles at the ends of the armrests.

“Why—why are these stuck closed like this?” Hideyoshi asked, tugging at the bands of metal. “I mean, I get that they’re locked, there’s a—a keyhole, but—but it’s locked while it’s _empty_. You know?”

Yuuki stared at the locks. When she reached out to touch the metal with a tentative finger, she moved slowly enough that Hideyoshi and Ren could see her hand quivering. Her fingertip traced the circular shape next to the keyhole.

“Is this the Sun symbol?” she whispered.

Hideyoshi examined the engraving on the opposite side of the chair. “A circle with a dot,” he said. “Yeah, that’s—that’s what Aoi said, right?”

“So maybe we’ll find the Sun key in this room,” Ren said. “That’s usually how it is, right? There’s something in the puzzle we need the key for, and then it turns out we can use it again later to unlock another door once we’re done with the puzzles.”

“Torture.”

Ren gave Yuuki a glance out of the corner of his eyes. Hideyoshi did not hear her deathly whisper, having already moved on to investigate a control panel in the far corner of the room.

“That’s what this room is, isn’t it?” Yuuki swallowed when her voice squeaked out at the end of her sentence. “It’s… it’s a torture chamber. They tortured people in here. People like…”

Her stomach grew cold. The blood drained out of her limbs.

“She sent me here,” she mumbled. “She wanted me to come here.”

The sound of water rushing under their feet cut Ren off before he could ask what she meant. Hideyoshi looked up from the dashboard of levers, buttons, and dials with wide eyes.

“Shit, what time is it?!” Ren hissed, glaring around the room as he fell into a wider stance, knees bent, ready to run. “Is it—is the boat gonna—?!”

Hideyoshi held his hands to his pale face. “I just—I just pulled a lever, I didn’t know it was—!”

He scampered back from the machinery and ran towards Yuuki and Ren with terror in his eyes. His shoes banged against the thick pane of green glass under their feet. Ren crouched down to peer into the glass. The sound grew louder, and he could see something beginning to rise.

Underneath the bottom deck of the Gigantic at this very location was a relatively small, watertight chamber. Its floor was comprised of massive lower doors that opened up into the sea, drawing in water if hollow, and emptying out waste if full, which was probably the original purpose of the chamber. By opening and shutting the doors leading into and out of the disposal chamber in a certain succession, one could strategically draw water into and flood certain decks of the ship. The man who had owned this ship before the Nonary Project, however, just used this chamber as a disposal tank, of sorts. Once he was finished his business in this room, he would dump the waste into the chamber below through the glass panel in the floor.

The bony knuckles of a half-decayed hand rapped against the glass when it floated up to the surface with the rising water. The torn sleeve around the forearm had become too ragged to cover up the bloodless place where the elbow came to an end, half-cleaved, half-disintegrated at the joint. It did not belong to the headless torso that came rising up behind it, because both hands were still attached to that corpse piece. The empty-eyed skull with thin, stringy hair and a missing jaw might have once been attached to that torso, however. What little was left of the flesh and cartilage of its nose pressed right up against the glass when the head bobbed up to the top of the tank. Then the face began to slowly spin with the nose as its axis, as if surveying the room with the blackened sockets above its protruding cheekbones.

It was an old ship, after all. Things did not always flush out of the chamber the way they were supposed to.

The room was filled with shrieks at the first shadow of movement in the water, and they only grew. Ren looked for something to vomit into and gave up searching under the catwalk. Hideyoshi scrambled to a different corner of the room, trying to cover his wide eyes with his hands, but he could not stop from peeking through the spaces between his little fingers, transfixed by the horrid sight. Yuuki stormed back up the stairs to the entrance.

Hideyoshi’s head shot up as he saw her take off. “Wh—where—where are you—?!”

She grabbed the lever on the door and threw her whole weight into turning it clockwise. When that failed, she switched the position of her hands, and tried counterclockwise. With a huff, she tried clockwise again, then kicked the door, pulling the handle, pushing it, pounding on it with her fists.

“Yuuki, that—that’s where we came from,” Hideyoshi called.

“I don’t care! I wanna go back!” she yelled back, then gasped in air through chattering teeth. “I just wanna get _out_ of here!”

Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Ren stumbled up the stairs towards the sound of Yuuki’s voice, blinking blank and shimmery spots from his vision as he moved and swayed. When he grabbed her shoulder, she shook him off and threw a malformed fist in his general direction. With eyes and nose running, she flew around the catwalk to the other door, the exit, and started pounding on that one instead. Only a step behind her, Ren did all he could to get her away from the door without gripping too tightly, or pulling too hard, or hitting her flailing arms.

“Yuuki, stop, c’mon, it’s not gonna open,” he said, his throat raw with stomach acid. “Yuuki. Yuuki, you’re gonna—you’re gonna hurt yourself!”

Hideyoshi got up, but made it only to the first stair to the exit before it dawned on him how small and powerless he was. He watched in a daze as the older kids struggled with each other, and flinched when Yuuki shoved Ren in his direction. Backing away from the stairs, he whipped his head around the room, his breath quicker and harder. There was only one way he could help Yuuki now, and that was to find the way out as fast as he could.

“Just _stop_ , okay?!” Ren pleaded. His voice cracked; it was prone to that these days. “I’m _sorry_. I’m sorry we’re here. I’m sorry you—”

Any time his young body used force, he felt detached from it. Whether he was throwing punches or throwing Yuuki against a railing to stop her bloody knuckles from hitting the door again, he stopped recognizing himself as soon as he made use of the strength developing in his muscles. It was like an out of body experience, yet he was still watching everything through his own eyes. He had this power. He was using this power. He hated this power.

Yuuki winced when she knocked into the metal railing. The world Ren was seeing through his own eyes blurred up with sudden tears.

“Yuuki,” Ren begged. “ _Yuuki_.”

 “Why’re you crying?!” She pushed against his shoulders when he drew near, but her hands were weak after the bruising they had taken. “You can’t—boys can’t—boys aren’t s’posed to—”

“I don’t give a _shit_ what boys are—!”

Yuuki’s eyes went wide with fear to see everything Ren hated about being a boy—yelling, anger, power, abuse—drawing closer to her, cornering her against the metal railing. So Ren stopped, took a deep breath, and tried to be the person she wanted to be.

“Maybe I’m not real fucking good at being a boy, okay?” she muttered, wiping at her wet eyes.

The two girls stood before each other for a long, silent moment, each sniffing and fighting back their tears. Yuuki had wanted to hug Ren again ever since the first hug had ended too soon, but that was something she could not say to a boy. If Ren was not a boy, though, then it was alright.

Ren held her arms open. Yuuki barreled into them in an instant, and Ren squeezed her tight.

“I’m scared,” she sobbed.

“I know,” said Ren. “Me too.”

Metal clanged against metal. Ren raised her head to find Hideyoshi holding out one hand as a counterbalance, fingers wrapped around a wrench, while he reached deep into a dark, hollow tank with the other hand. Although he met Ren’s gaze, he said nothing until he had fished out the prize and examined it closely.

“It’s the Sun key,” he said weakly.

Yuuki gasped. She wriggled out of Ren’s arms to make her way to the stairs, only to stop short at the sight of the limbs and viscera floating in the tank below.

“Look up,” Ren whispered, holding her own eyes to the ceiling. “Just don’t look down. It’s fine. We’re okay.”

She held the railing in one hand and Yuuki’s hand in her other, and they descended together, just as Hideyoshi finished unlocking the manacles on the electric chair. Once they hung open, he glanced nervously at the screen behind the chair, then back at the manacles, then back to the screen. Ren stepped past him to read the unwelcome text displayed in faded green.

[To complete the experiment, data must be collected from the subject. Once preparation is finished, place subject in chair.]

“I… I think someone has to—has to sit there,” Hideyoshi said warily.

“Once preparation is finished,” Ren amended. “Let’s… figure out the preparation thing first, yeah?”

Hideyoshi frowned back at the monitor, tugging at the open manacles. “I thought—I thought this would—I thought this would… huh.”

Given no further instructions on this screen, he orbited the chair with a scrutinizing gaze, looking for anything else that might need preparing. Ren moved towards the console tucked away in the corner of the room, covered in buttons, dials, and levers. All three tried to keep their eyes away from the floor. Yuuki was staring up at the cables leading into the back of the tall chair.

“Hideyoshi’s too short,” she murmured. “It has to be me or Ren.”

Ren whipped her head over her shoulder. “Me,” she cut in immediately. “I’ll do it. You don’t have to, Yuuki, I’ll do it.”

“B-but—but I—I can’t—we can’t,” Hideyoshi stammered, gesturing at the screen, “neither of us can solve the puzzles. I could—I could only solve the last one by—by guessing. I had to—there were switches, off and on, and it was supposed to match a picture, but I guess—I guess we didn’t have the picture on this side, so I just—I just guessed, but I can’t if—if someone’s sitting in the—in the—I can’t—I can’t—what if it—”

“Ren has to see the screen,” Yuuki uttered. “I… I have to sit in the chair. I have to sit in the chair.”

“No! No, this is stupid,” Ren said, stomping back towards her. “Yuuki, your brother’s almost as short as Hideyoshi. He’s not gonna fit in the chair either. It’s me and Aiko, it’s gotta be. We’re the only two big enough.”

Yuuki shook her head furiously, holding her hands under her eyes as a shaking grimace spread her lips. “We can’t do it, Ren,” she whimpered. “We can’t… It has to be me. Me and, and Sachiko—and you and your sister—”

“You _know_ her name!” Ren protested. She grabbed Yuuki’s shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “You know Hideyoshi’s sister’s name, and you know she’s tall enough to sit in the chair. And you knew how to turn on the sink, and you knew the rules for baccarat, and how to calculate a digital root. You’re just as psychic as the rest of us. You can do this.”

“But you can do it _better_!” Yuuki yelled. “W-why are—why are you—?”

“Because you don’t deserve this,” Ren said. “I… I don’t want you to go through any more of this bullshit.”

“What, so _you_ deserve this?” Yuuki shot back.

Ren’s lip quivered, and then she muttered, “Maybe I do.”

On the inner ring of the clamp for the forehead were little copper inlays, conductive spots to connect electricity to the surface of the skin around the brain. Ren had heard of something like this being used for therapy, maybe in the kind of therapy people always wanted to ban, therapy that promised to fix little girls like Ren and put them back together as the little boys they were supposed to be.

“I don’t care what happens to me.” Ren made her way towards the chair. “I don’t care if it kills me.”

With her eyes stuck on the cables hanging from the ceiling, she did not see Hideyoshi dart in front of her before he shoved against her stomach to push her back. When she met his eyes, she found them brimming with tears.

“We—we hafta—we hafta do the preparations first,” he stammered weakly, as he stood with his feet and arms spread, as if guarding Ren from sitting in the chair. “I-it—it—it won’t work till we…”

“What’re the preparations?” Ren mumbled, glancing around the room.

“I-I—I dunno. But…” Hideyoshi pointed to the control panel that had flooded the disposal chamber. “But that’s the only thing we—that’s the only thing we can do anything with.”

They shuffled to the panel together. The reverberations of their footsteps on the glass doors made the severed head bounce and rotate in the opposite direction.

Hideyoshi had pulled the yellow lever on the console already, to flood the tank. The red lever would open the glass doors, if it had not been locked in place for the purpose of the experiment. The dials were rusted over, and the one that Yuuki managed to turn seemed to do nothing. The only serviceable controls were the blue buttons, alphabetically labeled. Hideyoshi depressed the one with the letter [D] to show how it lit up when activated.

“I tried turning them all on before, but it—it didn’t do anything,” he explained. “Maybe it’s a certain combination—or—or a certain order, or…”

With a slow, deliberate hand, Yuuki reached out to the console. She pressed down on the [A] button, then the [B] button, then brought her hand thoughtfully to her lips.

“Is… is that the right combination?” Hideyoshi whispered.

Yuuki blinked and dropped her hand. “N-no, I just,” she mumbled, “I just thought…”

She traced out the letters she had pressed.

“B-A-D,” she spelled. “Like English. <Bad.> This machine is <bad>.”

They stared in silence at the glowing letters for a long time.

Then Ren covered her mouth and lurched away from the control panel as she gave a snort, which gave way to helpless giggling.

It was a cascade after that. Yuuki let out a sudden laugh of surprise that she had managed to make Ren laugh, and Hideyoshi started snickering when Ren had to grip the corner of the console to keep herself upright as she doubled over. It was not honestly that funny, but once they started laughing, it let out the floodgates for an emotion they had not been able to feel for hours, and soon they were all crouching over the floor, holding their aching bellies and cheeks and wiping tears of joy from their eyes.

“Okay,” Ren exhaled, rising to her feet with a lingering grin. “Okay, let’s finish this. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

She clicked off the [A] button, then turned on both [E] and [F]. Behind them, the chair hummed with life, and the monitor beside it displayed new text.

“Hey,” Yuuki said. “I’m… I’m gonna sit in the chair, though.”

Ren’s eyes went wide, but Yuuki’s face was composed, if a little bit anxious. “You sure?” she asked.

“Yeah. I trust you.” She smiled at Ren, then at Hideyoshi. “You two are gonna do it right, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Hideyoshi chirped.

“Then I’ll be fine.”

Ren had already opened her mind to Aiko to get those letters right. She kept the channel going, no matter what kinds of thoughts were racing through her head in the background. For what might have been the first time in her life, she felt good about herself. She felt proud.

_They tried three times to start the experiment with Hideki in the chair, but the device could not recognize such a small person. After the third error message, Sachiko, with a huff, dragged him bodily from the seat. She took his hand, palm up, and traced her finger in it._

_“I trust you,” Hideki read aloud as she spelled it._

_Sachiko pointed at Aiko, too, and gave a thumbs-up. She dropped herself into the chair and closed the clamps around her ankles, knees, head, and one wrist with a flippant look on her face. Hideki closed the manacle on her last wrist and squeezed her hand. She smiled._

_Aiko inhaled deeply as the screen changed. “Ready?” she asked._

Hideyoshi closed the last manacle around Yuuki’s wrist and held her hand. “Ready,” Ren said.

_“I love you,” Aiko whispered._

Ren’s heart came up to her throat. “I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (KIT YOU CALLED IT)
> 
> I might be a little inconsistent with Ren's pronouns from here on out, pending on who's speaking or narrating. Nothing malicious, just, nobody else knows, so.


	11. Door [6]

I always thought there was something special about every kind of pair of siblings, except mine. When two girls are sisters, they’re best friends who share everything, like Nona and her twin Ennea. When two boys are brothers, they’re playmates who do everything together, like Nobu and Kenshin playing piano duets. When a girl has an older brother, he watches over her and protects her, like Light watches over Clover.

When a girl has a little brother, he’s determined to be the most annoying little snot in existence. He tries to embarrass her in front of her friends and play pranks on her and gross her out. There’s nothing cute about it. And that’s how it was with me and Hideki.

“ _I_ wrote it,” I said for the fourth time. “I wrote it myself. _He_ copied _me_.”

With a sigh, the teacher closed her eyes to keep them from rolling. I shrank down in my seat an inch or two, arms folded.

“How could he have copied you if he turned his in before you?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said again. “But I wrote mine myself.”

“Yuuki, I know this is embarrassing, and I know that you know that plagiarism is a serious offense,” she said, “but I need you to tell me the truth.”

“I _am_ telling the truth!” I shot back, lurching forward with a glare. “I’m telling you, he’s playing a trick on me! I sat down, by myself, in my room, and I wrote it myself.”

She wasn’t my teacher, or Hideki’s teacher. She was the teacher receiving entries for a speech competition.

“I didn’t even know he was entering,” I muttered.

Had I known, I probably wouldn’t have tried. Dad already compared us often enough, like he thought it was gonna make me magically do better if I heard my brother was getting better grades than me. There was nothing he could say that would motivate me less than when he said stuff like that.

I didn’t usually have any interest in extracurricular things like this. I wasn't even much of a writer anymore, either, not since elementary school. I was one of those gifted and talented kids back then, and then everybody else caught up, or maybe I just slowed down.

But the inspiration struck me out of nowhere a few days ago. The words rolled out of my hand as I wrote letter after fluid letter in ink, almost without pause.

The two speeches were sitting side by side on her desk. Hideki had typed his up and printed it out, and mine was handwritten. They started with the exact same sentence. I skimmed through his copy to find that he had followed an identical flow of ideas. They ended with the exact same sentence. We made the same joke in the middle.

“It doesn’t even make sense,” I grumbled, swallowing my frustration. “He typed his up. Why would I hand-write it if I could just copy his off the computer?”

I wasn’t even mad about being forced to withdraw from the speech competition. I was used to trying my best and getting shot down and outshined by Hideki. I was even used to getting in trouble because of one of his stupid tricks.

I _wasn’t_ used to having a disciplinary infraction to be placed on my permanent academic record and a mandatory meeting with a therapist because the guidance counselor was convinced I had a problem with pathological lying.

Hideki usually cut the charade short before things got out of hand. He wasn’t even enjoying it like he usually did, shooting me devilish sneers when the grown-ups weren’t looking. Instead, he looked almost haunted, especially when the two of us were shuttled to a children’s clinic for the intake appointment. I figured maybe he hadn’t meant for it to go this far, and he knew that if he fessed up to the whole thing now, he’d get all the blame hanging over my head.

He was a scrawny little kid still, with thick black hair that got messy and fluffy like mine did when I didn’t straighten it. His teeth were too big for his mouth and it gave him such an evil smile when he spread his lips. But his eyes were rounder than mine, and it made him look like a puppy when he wanted to. He used that on grown-ups a lot. He was using it on me when he gestured me closer during the trip to the clinic.

“I’m gonna withdraw from the competition, too,” he mumbled. “I’ll… I’ll tell them it was all a big misunderstanding. I’ll make something up.”

I folded my arms and glared out the window. “Why don’t you just tell the truth?”

_Because no one’s gonna believe the truth._

He looked at me very seriously in a way I didn’t understand until we were thousands of miles apart, me in the ocean and him in the desert, and I could still hear him sometimes. Our mouths didn’t move again, but somehow it felt like the conversation didn’t end.

I recognized the woman writing down my details for the intake.

Well, I didn’t recognize her when I first met her, obviously. We shook hands, she told me her name but I didn’t listen, she asked me personal questions and I gave terse answers. The sound of her jingling bracelets drew my eyes to her hands. She had long, oval nails, warmly coated with a deep red. I watched them grip the pen as she wrote my information into some forms. I watched their grip tighten when I mentioned my brother.

“Is your brother here today?” she asked tentatively.

“Yeah.”

After a beat, she let out a soft sigh. “We’re going to need to screen the two of you in a… special session, after this.”

I frowned. “What for?”

I caught her rolling her eyes. “It’s this new procedure we’re trying out here,” she explained, sounding a little exasperated. “Honestly, I’m not sure what it’s… I think it’s a load of crap, but my mentor’s working on the project, so.” She gave me a knowing smile and a lackadaisical shrug. “It won’t take long, don’t worry.”

It was a load of crap. They strapped a blindfold on me, covered my ears, and told me to talk about anything that came to mind, and for the next five minutes literally all I could think about was goats, for some reason. Like when a snippet of a song gets caught in your head, but instead, it’s goats.

Next was a diagnostic test. “If you test well on this exam,” said the big, looming man with the empty smile sitting on the other side of the desk, “then we’ll be able to clear up those problems you’re having at school.”

The test was impossible. It made no sense. It was like the whole question wasn’t even there, and you had to kind of fill in the gaps with intuition.

Hideki said he had the same test as me and he solved it no problem. Typical.

Maybe the man proctoring the test didn’t really look disappointed when I failed. It was just that he had that same stony face that Dad always wore when I hadn’t done enough. When I did my absolute best, Dad could shoot me down with a brief smile, a word of shallow praise, and a lack of eye contact. Otherwise he wore a blank mask to hide his mild disappointment.

Another, much smaller man came out to talk to the first, struggling over his P’s as he stuttered, “N-negative reinforcement i-isn’t as effective as p-p-positive p-p-p-punishment, which c-confirms the original hyp-pothesis.” He gave his head a good shake, further disheveling the absolute mess that was his hair. “W-we’ll try the o-other approach n-next time.”

“There’s no need,” said the first man in his booming voice. “We’re wasting time on these silly clinical studies. Our priority now is to gather candidates for the _real_ experiment.”

The young woman who did my intake led me away from those men and brought me back to the lobby, apologizing for the inconvenience. She kept looking back over her shoulder with a troubled crease in her brow. I looked, too, even after the men disappeared into an office. We both had the sense that something was wrong, but we had no idea what it could be.

I recognized her when I saw her the second time. She was strapped to an operating table, with electrical nodes drilled into her skull, begging for her life.

I don’t even remember her name.

 

* * *

 

“Nona,” Nobu called. He was frozen in place for a moment, but as soon as he could figure out how to move his feet again, he was pounding across the cargo room towards her. “Nona, I—I found a picture of you.”

Nona’s eyes flashed. She took the card from his blackened hands, wiping a smudge of coal dust from the surface of the glossy photograph. She stared at it for a while in silence, before saying, “No, this is Ennea. This is my sister.”

Nobu’s eyebrows twitched. He took the card back, poring over it intently. “No way,” he said. “Wow, you guys look exactly the same.”

“We—don’t touch the bottom, you’ll get it all dirty. Look, it’s got electronic stuff.” She swatted his filthy hands away from the gold contacts at the base of the photograph. “And we don’t look _exactly_ the same, we’ve got different eye shapes. Hers are more droopy.”

Pinching it at the corner, Nobu held up the card next to Nona’s face. He shook his head as his eyes flicked between them. “It’s the same,” he swore. “It even took you a while to figure out it wasn’t a picture of you!”

“That’s just ’cuz it’s so small!” Nona shot back, snatching the photo from his precarious grip. “Where’d they even get this, anyway?”

They saw the flash of Claire’s red hair out of the corners of their eyes seconds before she enunciated, “What?”

The first glimpse of the steam engine room had awed the young trio to a standstill once they opened the door into the vast cavern. A breathy “What?” escaped Nobu’s lips, and then Nona’s. And then, a few seconds later, Claire had mimicked the sound of the word. After the echo of her strident voice faded, Nobu and Nona burst into a fit of giggles, and they tried to teach her what the word meant.

“What?” Nona had said slowly with a sharp rise in her pitch, lifting her eyebrows and her shoulders in an open-palmed shrug.

“What?” Nobu had said, wearing a puzzled expression and scratching his head.

Claire’s nose wrinkled with a big smile and she waved a pointed finger into the engine room. “What!”

“Yeah! What!” Nobu agreed.

And so she repeated the word any time she wanted to know what was going on, even though the “what” could rarely be explained without words.

Nona handed Claire the picture. When, after a glance, Claire stared back up at her with wide eyes, Nona shook her head while pointing at her face. “Ennea,” she said, slowly and loudly. “Not me. My sister.”

“Ennea,” Claire repeated, frowning at the picture.

Unlike every other puzzle they had encountered so far, neither the steam engine room nor the cargo room strictly required access to the morphogenetic field, until this point. Both Kubota and Nijisaki had advised against this design, when they reviewed everything after preparing the one piece that Hongou could not himself set up. Hongou wanted the focus to come at this point, to test the exact ability he hoped to gain from accessing the morphic fieldset.

He wanted to be able to recognize faces.

“I found another one,” Nobu said with a frown, pulling a card out of a sack. “She… she kinda looks familiar, but…”

Nona only had to give a glance at the girl’s soft, brown eyes and long, long hair. “Aiko,” she replied.

“Wait, you _know_ her?”

“She’s Ren’s sister. Look, they’ve got the same eyes. And chin.”

Nobu gave a half-smile as he held the card closer to his eyes. “Huh, and I thought Ren had long hair,” he joked. “Hers is running off the edge. You can’t even see where it ends.”

Nona held a hand at the level of her hip. “About here, I think.”

“Whoa.”

After these two images, they got the bigger picture. Nobu and Nona made gestures of scattering to Claire, pointing to the cards. The three split up to search for the seven remaining cards.

When Nobu found his third card, he tried to recognize the boy in the picture for himself rather than call to Nona again. If he could not identify the boy by his vague impression of what was happening in Building Q, he thought he could perhaps match his facial features to someone on this ship.

The boy was not of Japanese descent. His sharp, elfin features and haunting purple eyes looked nothing like Claire’s cherubic face, nor Light’s long, elegant visage. And both of them had sisters, not brothers.

He did not get the chance to ponder it further. Claire’s feet slammed against the floor when she jumped off of a wooden crate, then she pounded across the room to Nobu, holding out a card with both hands.

“Kenshin,” he mumbled when he took it.

“You and your brother don’t look anything alike,” Nona teased.

Kenshin’s hair was shaggy, straight, and naturally a shade fairer than Nobu’s coarse, dark hair, which curled when it grew too long. Kenshin had the darker skin, though, and the longer nose where Nobu’s was flat and wide. Though he used to be thin as a rail when he was younger, his weight had finally caught up to pace with his height now that he was almost a teenager, whereas Nobu had always been a little bit chubby. They looked no more alike than two strangers.

“Yeah, well, whoever’s brother is this,” Nobu said, holding out the picture of the purple-eyed boy, “doesn’t look much like him either.”

Nona looked a little sad when she took the card from his hand. “Reed,” she murmured.

“Reed?” he repeated. “Whose brother is Reed?”

“Violet’s,” Nona said absently.

Nobu blinked. “You mean, Akane? This is Akane’s brother?”

“What? Of course not!” Nona rolled her eyes. “Akane’s Japanese. Reed’s white. Can't you see?”

Nobu gave a little pout, folding his arms, and folding the picture of Kenshin under his elbow as he did so. “They could’ve been adopted. I dunno,” he mumbled.

_Ennea watched Kenshin clamber to the top of a tall wooden crate. The gears were beginning to turn in her head._

_“Don’t talk too much about what’s going on with Reed and Violet, or the two kids on your end,” she whispered. “I don’t think everyone’s figured it out. I don’t think we want the people running this to know what’s going on.”_

“You know who’s really similar? Like, weirdly similar,” Nona said, examining the card she had found in another bag. “Hideyoshi and Yuuki’s brother. I mean, they don’t _look_ alike, not really, but Hideki—first off, their names are Hideyoshi and Hideki. And they’re both kind of small and skinny, and they’re both really good with the puzzles, and…”

Claire peered at the card Nona was looking at while she spoke. Hideki’s hair was a bit messier than Hideyoshi’s, but still about the same length and color. His glasses were square and dark where Hideyoshi’s were round and silver. The lime-green T-shirt he was wearing in the photo sold the comparison even further.

“And _her_ … Sachiko. Hideyoshi’s older sister.” Nona stared at the card Claire had handed her, of the girl with the doe’s eyes peeking out from under thick, straight-cut bangs, her bobbed hair ending roughly at her little chin. “Sachiko and Light, they really make me think… and even Claire, too.”

She looked down at Claire, who gazed back up, oblivious to all Nona was saying except for the sound of her own name.

“Sachiko, Light, Claire, and her sister, and… there’s another girl, too, she doesn’t know Japanese either,” Nona went on, holding up Reed’s photo and thinking of his sister. “This… this whole _game_ thing is… it’s _horrible_. It’s awful, it’s scary, it’s… it’s…”

She could not say anymore without thinking of Yuuki and the unknown woman on the operating table in the burning laboratory.

“But it must be so much worse for them,” she whispered. “Light can’t see what’s happening. Sachiko can’t talk, she can’t tell anyone anything. And all the people who can’t speak Japanese, none of them really know what’s going on all the time.”

She snapped her head up when she heard a loud sniff from across the room. Her eyes found Nobu just as he was lifting his gauze-wrapped hand to his face and turning away.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Claire did not wait to ask. She darted across the room to him and threw her arms around him, squishing her face against his tummy. He shook and squeaked with a little sob, and then he was holding both hands to his eyes, the picture of Kenshin tucked between his fingers.

“I-i-it’s nothing, I j-just… I… I…”

He wiggled away from Claire despite her grasp on his sweater, which had tightened when she heard how weak his voice had become. Clumsily he backed into the large wooden crate behind him. He sank against it to the ground, folding his arms against his curled up knees so he could bury his face in them. Without hesitating for even a beat, Claire dropped to her knees beside Nobu. She hooked her arms around his upper arm and hugged it against her chest, watching and waiting for him to look up.

“I-it’s stupid, it’s nothing. I’m fine.” He wiped his tears on the backs of his hands in an embarrassed frenzy when Nona came slowly over to sit beside him. “I just… I was just thinking, I-I… I’m so scared I’ll n-never… what if I never… what if I never s-see him again?”

Claire squeezed his right arm, and Nona took his left hand, and for a little while all three of them let themselves be afraid.

_“I hate that I’m not good enough at this whole ‘transmitting’ thing,” Kenshin said, holding the card that displayed his own face. “I need to be able to help him. If I can’t help him… if he can’t get off the ship because of me…”_

_“It’s okay. Nona and I can help him if you can’t,” Ennea said. “And Nona said you really helped him out back in the first class cabin. You’re doing great.”_

_“But I haven’t done anything since!” Kenshin protested. “He’s… I’m not… If we get out of here, and he doesn’t, his parents would…”_

_Subconsciously, Ennea nodded to herself at his word choice._

Nona blinked, and stared at Nobu.

_“I’m not… I’m not his real brother. We were just neighborhood friends at first,” Kenshin said quietly. “Then all this stuff happened with my birth parents, and… and they couldn’t take care of me, and Nobu’s parents adopted me. Just, out of nowhere, you know? I was just some kid who played with their son sometimes. And they adopted me.”_

_Ennea smiled. “They sound really nice,” she said._

_“Yeah. They are.” Kenshin rubbed the heel of his palm against his eye and held his head low, pretending to stare at his own picture. “But I always… I feel like I don’t know what I did to deserve that, you know? I’m always trying to do my best for them. I stay up late studying, and I push myself to practice really tough stuff on piano, and maybe if I'm good enough at soccer I'll be able to get into a good school on an athletic scholarship. I don’t want to be a burden after everything they’ve done. So if… so if I can’t help Nobu… if it’s my fault, and the boat…”_

_She laid a hand on his quaking shoulder. “It’s not your fault. Don’t say things like that,” she said. “You’re scaring your brother.”_

“Don’t say things like that,” Nona repeated, patting Nobu’s hand. “We’re all gonna make it out of here.”

Nobu sniffed, stiffened his trembling lip, and nodded firmly. As he steadied his breathing, Claire began to dig through her overalls’ pockets, Nona thought for a picture, until she pulled out a tiny green clover.

“Yeah, like Light said,” Nona said. “We’re gonna work together and get out of here. All of us.”

Nobu gave a twinkling grin and tousled Claire’s hair. “She always knows when to pull that out,” he said with a weak chuckle. “Okay... okay. Let’s keep looking for more pictures.”

As soon as he rocked to his feet, he started climbing the crates that Kenshin had been climbing just moments ago in Building Q.

_Ennea glanced across the room at Clover. The little girl held a small bag to her chest, hand stuffed inside to rummage through its contents, but now she was moving so slowly. Although she had trouble keeping up with their Japanese when they spoke too quickly or informally, she must have heard too much of what Kenshin had said._

“Oh, is this Claire’s sister?” Nobu wondered when he dug the photo out of the crate. “She’s got red hair, too, but…”

Nona shook her head before even seeing the card. “That’s Clover,” she said. “You know…”

“Light’s sister,” Nobu said, a little bit awed. “There she is. That’s her.”

She had the biggest, brightest smile in the picture, her thick hair pulled into lopsided pigtails. Little stickers dotted her cheeks like colorful freckles. Nobu had been curious about her ever since he learned her name, curious about the girl who would make a blind man pick nine four-leaf clovers out of love. He could tell from the picture that she was special: she was a girl who stood out, who was going to be somebody important, somebody loved, wherever she went for the rest of her life.

“Here’s Claire’s sister,” Nona said, waving another card. “This is Holly.”

Nobu hopped down from the crates to get a glimpse of the tall, blonde girl with calm eyes and a warm smile. “She’s real pretty,” he mumbled.

“You get it now, though, right?” Nona said in a low voice, gesturing at Nobu to lift his hand so that they could compare cards. “Holly and Clover. Light and Claire. You know how Clover’s wearing bracelet [9], and Holly’s wearing bracelet [1]?”

Holly and Light were both lean and elegant teens, though Light’s hair had an ashier tone than Holly’s golden blonde. Clover and Claire were both small redheads.

“Someone thought they were sisters,” Nobu blurted. “Claire and Clover. They put the same bracelets on Claire and Clover because—and Light and Holly, because—”

“Claire?” Nona called and waved to the girl peering into a small box. “Hey, Claire! Look! C’mon, it’s your sister. It’s Holly!”

Claire, who was ordinarily so excitable, who always tried to include herself in conversations where she did not even know the language, barely stirred at the sound of her own and her sister’s names. She raised her head slowly, her face pale.

“What’s wrong?” Nona murmured.

“What?” Nobu enunciated, exaggerating a confused frown.

Claire looked back down into the box. She plucked the ninth and final card from within and held it towards Nona and Nobu. “What,” she said softly.

_“Wait, who’s she?” Kenshin mumbled, peering over Clover’s shoulder at the card she had found._

_Neither of them had ever seen the brown-haired girl in this photo. She looked about Ennea’s age, except for her eyes; her eyes were so round and innocent that, at a glance, they made her look much younger, but when they stared too long, they fell deep into her gaze, a gaze that seemed eternal._

“Akane?” Nobu breathed when he took the card from Claire’s hand. “Why… why is Akane…?”

He remembered the name they had called her at the beginning of the experiment. He remembered the photo of the American boy who did not have a match to any of the players on the boat.

“Oh my God,” he uttered, whirling around to Nona. “Akane is… Akane is…?!”

“Nobu, shh,” Nona hissed, clenching her fists.

“These are supposed to be all the kids in the other place, right? The building, Building Q,” he said, his words growing faster and faster. “But they—if they mixed up Light and Claire, or their sisters, or whatever, then what if they—what if they mixed up—what if _Akane_ was supposed to be—?!”

“Be _quiet!_ ” Nona snapped. “I _know_ , okay? Just—”

“But Nona!” His hands were shaking, his eyes wide with fear. “It’s Aoi, isn’t it?! He’s the only one whose sibling we didn’t find! Aoi and—!”

“ _Nobu!_ ” Nona shrieked.

Her voice echoed through the cargo room. For the time being, it silenced Nobu, though his cheeks were puffed out as if physically holding back a torrent of words yet unspoken.

“Please, please just be quiet,” she exhaled. “I think... I think we’re being watched.”

Nobu staggered back. His eyes shot to the upper corners of the room in search of security cameras.

“I mean—someone was watching us in the beginning, remember?” Nona said. “That man who told us all the rules. He could see us. He was listening to us and responding to us. So he could be watching us right now.”

“You think he… he doesn’t know he messed it up?” Nobu whispered. “Would it be bad if he knew?”

“Don’t you think Aoi and Akane think so?” Nona pointed out. “They’ve been hiding it this whole time.”

“But Nona, I’m—I’m really scared for them,” he uttered. “If they’re brother and sister, then they don’t have anyone to receive from in Building Q, and Light split up from his sister this round, so—”

Nona had been scared for them as soon as everyone split ways. Hideyoshi had pointed to her as one of the most adept psychics in the group, and even Light had trusted her, when Light surely had seen enough through his sister's eyes to know that she had no one to receive from in Building Q. But Nona had never seen her in action.

“You went through the last set of doors with Akane, right?” Nona said. “How did she do at solving the puzzles?”

Nobu paused. She watched his eyebrows furrow and his eyes go wide. “She solved the whole thing by herself,” he realized. “But… but how?”

Nona shook her head and shrugged. “I think there’s more to this psychic stuff that we just don’t know yet,” she said softly.

A tug at both of their sleeves cut their conversation short. Claire threw a thumb over her shoulder at the grid of numbered boxes on the ground, then pointed at Akane’s card and held out her open palms.

“Oh, yeah, we got ’em all,” Nobu said, handing over both Akane’s photo and those of Clover and Kenshin.

When Claire gave her an expectant stare, Nona remembered to hand over Holly’s card. Claire gave it a broad smile and a quick kiss before she scurried back to the boxes.

“<Thank you!>” Nobu called after her.

She grinned back at him. “<You’re welcome!>”

Though Claire was nowhere near as mysterious as Akane, there had been several points through these puzzle rooms where Nona noticed that she somehow seemed to know the next step. Nobu took it for granted; it slipped his mind at those points that her sister had not also gone through door [6]. Perhaps she and Akane both were drawing information from someone other than their siblings.

Claire frowned at the boxes when they did not open after she had put in all of the cards. She removed and inserted every card, until she came back to slot [1] and saw her sister’s face. She swapped it out with Clover’s image in box [9].Then she came back to the two center boxes that had puzzled her earlier, [4] and [5]. She opted to put Reed in box [5] instead of Akane—the original decision had been a toss-up, since they were both wearing bracelet [5]. As soon as she moved Akane to box [4], the lids popped up.

Nobu and Nona began collecting the pins inside the opened containers. Claire wiggled Akane’s card free from the slot and stared at it, trying to make sense of the strange feelings it gave her to look at Akane’s face, the feelings that had made her go pale when she first found the card inside that lonesome little box.

“<Be careful,>” she murmured like a prayer. “<Something bad wants to happen to you.>”


	12. Door [1]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: This chapter starts with Light's backstory. I describe his car accident in a possibly uncomfortable amount of detail at several points. Not a lot of eye trauma (because I personally can't handle that either lmao) but my boy gets hurt.

When the first words to leave my mouth after waking up in that hospital room were, “Is there a mirror?” I heard my mother burst into tears.

I knew why she was crying. I knew, perhaps from snippets of conversation heard in the semiconscious state in which, I later learned, I had been for three days—or perhaps from somewhere else—that the doctors thought I may never again have use of a mirror for the rest of my life. My face was damp under a thick layer of cotton and gauze that covered my eyes. I tried to move my left arm and felt it bound down, somehow restricted.

“Clover, is there a mirror?” I repeated. “Are you there, Clover?”

I felt her fingers worm their way past a splint on my right hand. “I’m here, Light,” she said. “There’s not a mirror, but it’s nighttime and the window’s all dark, so it’s like a mirror, almost.”

“Look at it,” I told her. “Look at yourself in the mirror.”

_She stood on her toes to peer above the windowsill with wide eyes. One of the stickers on her plump, rosy cheek was peeling off at the edge. She patted it back in place and gave it a good smile test. The sticker stayed put._

I did not yet know what wounds I had in my eyes, but God, crying hurt.

My mother did everything she could. She brought the books from my bedroom and picked up reading from where the boy I used to be had left his bookmarks. She bought a subscription to a library of audiobooks and played recordings when she could not be there to read to me. It was only by her attention to detail, her near-obsessive research, that I learned braille so quickly and became so practiced at using a computer with a top-of-the-line screenreader.

And then there was the arm.

I researched for hours upon hours every day about prosthetic options, weighing form and function, carefully considering cost since I was on the cusp of adolescence and had plenty more to grow if my father’s height was any indication. I thought about the piano, then I thought about the guitar I had received for my birthday last year, and I thought about tuning the E strings down to D, and the G and B to F and A, and barring the chords with a crude prosthetic fashioned from a capo, or maybe restringing the guitar altogether so that the strings ran the opposite way, like a left-handed guitar, and relearning all that I had taught myself over the past few months in the opposite hands, practicing with my right hand in the hopes that someday I would have a left to strum the silent chords I was fingering.

After all of my research, I decided I did not want a prosthetic until I was older, when it would be a worthwhile investment, when the technology might improve to make electronic motion controls more intuitive. I did not want a hunk of useless plastic hanging from my shoulder in the meantime; I would rather my sleeve were empty. If it could not work like my real arm used to, I reasoned, there was no reason to wear anything at all.

There was no reason to a lot of things if I thought them through too much, which I always did.

I was too young and inexperienced to understand that the feeling gripping me over those years, that surely my mother recognized even if she could not identify it by name, was depression, instigated by the sudden drop in stimuli in my environment. I had left public school following my injury. My circadian rhythms fell into chaos without sunlight to regulate it. Half of my favorite hobbies were now impossible, and the other half were still exceedingly difficult.

I think, in my mother’s head, she thought that if she collected all of the pieces, she could fix her broken son and he would be as good as new again. I think I was the only one who understood that my life would never be what it once was, and that I had to move on from that—though I certainly had not moved on yet.

When I was with Clover, I felt the closest to normal that I had felt since the accident. It was not simply because I could see glimpses of the world around me when I was near her. Clover saw me as I was, and loved me without wanting to fix anything about me.

“I’m learning my kanji,” she told me, speaking over an audiobook of the original, untranslated _1Q84_ (my second reading, but my first in Japanese). “I’ll be able to read you Japanese books myself soon.”

“You can barely read the unvoiced dialogue in your video games,” I teased.

It had never been the plan for us to spend the rest of our childhood in Japan, just enough that we could appreciate our maternal heritage and homeland, but healthcare came cheaper there. Out of sheer force of will, Clover was almost keeping pace with me in the language that I had begun to study years before she knew a word of it. She would let nothing keep her from being the social butterfly she was born to be.

By the time I turned fifteen, the doctors told my mother that I had reached the end of my growth spurts (although time would reveal that I most certainly had not). Eager for a new chance to purchase something that might fill in my holes and put me back together again, my mother did her research. She found out about the same technology I had been reading about with cautious exhilaration: artificial biological tissue, developed by an upstart pharmaceuticals company that had opened a children’s hospital not too far from our home in Japan. It was still in clinical stages, but that did not stop my mother from trying to get me into the trials, arguing in-person with the receptionist until one of the project coordinators came out to speak with her.

“We’ll have to screen them in a special therapy session,” said the man with a voice like ice.

“Them?” my mother repeated. “It’s only my son.”

“We’ll need your daughter to participate, too,” he explained. “As part of the control group, you see.”

_It was not just his voice that was like ice, but his hands, too, as he led Clover away from her brother and into a separate room to prepare. “Thank you for participating,” he said, smiling, but there was no joy in his face._

The door clicked shut in my room. “Your name is… Light?” asked the deep-voiced man leading the test.

I nodded.

“Well, Light, this is a bit unusual,” he said with a bit of a nervous chuckle. “Usually the procedure with this experiment is that we give you a series of objects to look at, but…”

_“Now, when I put these on, tell me anything that comes to your mind,” said the man, sliding big headphones over my ears with his thin, frigid hands._

I gave a chuckle. “A ganzfeld experiment?” I realized.

There was a pause before the man let out a surprised laugh of his own. “Yes,” he said. “You’re familiar with it?”

“One subject is placed in sensory deprivation, while the other is shown images with the intent of telepathically transmitting them,” I rattled off. “And it’s never been successfully replicated under controlled conditions, if I might be so brazen to add. Why on Earth is a hospital with such an esteemed reputation conducting experiments in pseudoscience?”

“How did you know this was the ganzfeld experiment?” the man asked, his voice now breathy with wonder.

“Because you have the subjects reversed.” I let a smug grin slide onto my face. “Because I am completely blind, yet I know you are a large man with a square jaw and a beard, and the doctor with my sister is a thin, pale man with shoulder-length hair, and the stutterer you were speaking with is a short man with large glasses and a lab coat a bit too broad for his shoulders, with hair he can’t quite keep tamed.”

I had seen all of this through Clover’s curious eyes. I savored the awed silence while it lasted, before he broke it with weak laughter that started incredulous, then grew and grew to something victorious, almost diabolical.

I heard him shuffle some papers. “What was your name, boy? Light… Light Field. This is _perfect_ ,” he said with a giddy grin in his voice. “Please, let me properly introduce myself—I am Gentarou Hongou, CEO of Cradle Pharmaceuticals. And _you_ are exactly the subject I didn’t know I should be looking for.”

I tried to keep my smile, but there was something almost predatory in Hongou’s tone that made my lips quiver.

“Have you heard of a condition called prosopagnosia?” he said.

I recognized the suffix _agnosia_ from various perception disorders of the mind. “I’m sure I’ve heard of it, but refresh my memory.”

“It’s when the brain fails to distinguish between human faces,” he explained. “The same way you might not be able to tell two monkeys apart, or two dogs of the same breed… that is how humans appear to someone with prosopagnosia.”

Sure enough, the condition sounded familiar. “I’m not sure how someone like me would be able to help to study the cognitive processes of vision,” I said, gesturing vaguely at my closed eyes.

“That’s not what I need to study! I wasn’t thinking broadly enough!”

I listened to his delighted voice bouncing around from different places in the room as he paced his heavy feet about.

“Your condition… You face the same plight,” he said. “For all intents and purposes, you, too, should not be able to recognize people by their faces when you meet them. But…”

Though I had heard his voice growing closer, his hands still caught me off-guard when they slammed down on my shoulders and gripped, giving me a small shake.

“You _can_ see them,” he said. “You can access the morphogenetic field. The information you are missing, you pluck from human consciousness through morphic resonance. This is _exactly_ the result I’ve been seeking.”

“Is the hypothetical person incapable of recognizing human faces _you_ , Mr. Hongou?”

His climbing rant hit a wall when I posed that sensitive question. I had a rather bold mouth, born from a blend of youthful precocity and an upbringing in a culture that did not afford elders as much respect as the Japanese did. The room fell quiet; even Hongou’s pacing footsteps ceased.

“In that way, we’re the same, boy,” he said finally. “No… you are who I want to _become_. I want to learn how you access the field. I want to gain that power by studying your abilities.”

“And what do _I_ stand to gain from this?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Hongou laughed. “Anything you desire,” he said. “How much do you want? We’ll pay anything for your cooperation.”

“A robotic prosthetic made with ABT. A left arm,” I responded without hesitation. “With touch-sensitivity and neural motor control. And any adjustments necessary if I continue to grow after it’s fitted.”

“It’s a deal,” he said. “Hold out your hand, boy. Let’s shake on it.”

That was where I paused. I knew what this arm could do for me, how it would change my life. I had learned to navigate this world without my eyes, but I tired of being a bystander in this world. I wanted to make and create, and every way I wanted to turn, I needed another steady hand. There was nothing I would not do for the perfect prosthetic. To take Hongou’s hand, however, was to force my sister into this agreement, as well.

His grip was tight and eager.

My mother was more practical, and more assertive. She made them produce a written statement and had it signed by both parties (though I noticed with a smirk that the statement did not specify the nature of the psychological tests we would be taking). That contract might have been the reason I did end up with any prosthetic at all.

_Although the motion of the robotics was quiet and fluid, the arm was encased in flesh-toned plastic, not the soft, skin-like material that they had promised. That would take time, they said, and further tests._

I felt Clover’s annoyance when, after checking my progress with the prosthetic prototype, the doctors took us into separate rooms and plastered EEG stickers all over our heads. Sickened by my selfishness, I wanted to call off the whole thing even before I saw what happened to her next.

_“I know you weren’t there at the time, but I want to talk to you about your brother’s accident,” said Nijisaki calmly. “Could you tell me what happened? Every detail you know, if you would.”_

I cringed. My left shoulder gave a sharp twitch. I had only fleeting memories of hazy, painful consciousness from that time, of my head throbbing and running warm and sticky with blood, my left arm blazing into an inferno, pressed onto a bed of glass from the remains of the windshield of my father’s car by the smoking underside of the car that had shattered it, and the realization that the darkness shrouding my eyes would not lift. The Jaws of Life like a jackhammer in my sensitive ears, and above that, the screams and shouts of unfamiliar voices begging me not to move, don’t move, don’t move or you’ll rip your arm off, kid.

_“He was sitting in the front seat of my dad’s car,” Clover recounted softly. Her breathing had already begun to grow heavy. “It was a little while after school, and a car on the other side of the road went into their lane. I think… I think the wheels kind of… ran up the front of my dad’s car, instead of them just hitting each other. Because the other car went through the windshield, and…”_

_She paused to clasp her hands together when she noticed they were trembling._

_“It hit Light really bad in the head. There wasn’t a lot of cuts on his face, but there was all this inside stuff, and it—it messed up his eyes forever,” Clover said. “And… and his arm was… his arm g-got stuck in the—in the—the wheel was spinning when it hit him and h-his arm—”_

My right hand was shaking as much as both of Clover’s, but I had learned how to use my left well enough to lift it to my forehead and peel at an electrode sticker. “Stop the experiment,” I said.

Hongou shifted in his seat, but at first, he said nothing.

_“This seems to be troubling you, Clover,” said Nijisaki. “Could you tell me more?”_

_She put on a grimace and rubbed her watering eyes that stayed steadfast on the ceiling. Through sheer determination, she would not cry. She had to be strong._

“Stop this immediately,” I demanded, ripping off the electrodes with both hands now. “Leave my sister out of this.”

“Sit down, boy,” Hongou snapped.

I didn’t realize until then that I was starting to stand, but at his order, I rose out of pure defiance.

“Do you want ABT on your prosthetic or not?” he growled.

_“I saw him,” Clover whispered. “Mom tried to keep me out of his room. She told me to keep Dad company that night—he was hurt, too, but not real bad like Light. But I saw him. I… I saw his arm before they cut it off.”_

_Even through the layers of bandages, ice packs, and IVs, it had been a horrifying sight: the bandages were soaked through with blood in reds rusty and dry, fresh and bright, and wet and dark. The shape under the wrappings was not straight, nor was it as long as the right arm lying motionless on the other side of his bed. He had already lost his hand by that point, back at the scene of the accident. The doctors were still trying to figure out how much of the rest of his arm they could salvage._

_Despite her best efforts, she gasped with a sob when she thought of it._

This was something I should never have put on the bargaining table. I had said I would do anything, but I would not do this.

“Let her go,” I said, almost shouting now. “Don’t make her talk about this anymore.”

“It’s a necessary part of the experiment!” Hongou insisted with a haranguing tone. “Listen to me, boy. _Fear_ increases your connection to the morphogenetic field. You understand, don’t you? Don’t you want to further your own abilities?”

I should have trusted every bad feeling he gave me when I first met him during the ganzfeld experiment.

“Never at her expense,” I said.

“But the prosthetic—”

I spat every word: “Never at her expense.”

“Boy, if you don’t sit down and do as I tell you right now,” he roared, “I’ll tell him to hold a knife to her throat until you cooperate.”

It shook me for only a moment. “I’ll be sure to tell the police you were threatening an eight-year-old girl,” I replied.

“I’ll shred our contract!” he shouted. “You’ll _never_ have your prosthetic, you ignorant child!”

I reached through the collar of my shirt down to my left shoulder. I undid the straps. The heavy hunk of metal and plastic fell to the ground with a loud smack.

“It’s a deal,” I said. “Let’s shake on it.”

He held out his hand and swung it across my face, instead.

I staggered back from the blow, more in shock than in pain. I had never had an adult raise a hand to me, though I’m sure deserved it many a time. The room was silent but for the echo of the skin hitting skin. Holding hand to my cheek, I slowly raised my head.

“Mr. Gentarou Hongou,” I said evenly, “I may be blind, but my mother is certainly not. How do you hope to explain the mark I’m _certain_ you’ve left on my face?”

I heard his seething breaths. “You little brat,” he hissed. “You of all people understand how important this research is, don’t you? The—the intimidation, the _fear_ you must experience—all of this is integral to the study.”

He stepped closer. I tensed my muscles to keep from backing away.

“I am _not_ a bad person. I _have_ to do this. It’s part of the experiment.”

“Then take my sister out of the experiment,” I ordered. “You can have me, but I won’t let you do this to her. Tell your partner to stop torturing her, now, or I’ll tell my mother about this, and gladly testify to law enforcement about the finer details of this meeting we’ve had.”

I thought I had him at my mercy. After Clover was released back to the waiting room, I negotiated a hefty price for my continued silence. Not only would Clover never return for these experiments again, but I was also to keep the prosthetic that they had built for me so far in its prototypical state, sans ABT, since they had already gone through the trouble of fitting it and programming it to my body. I judged by the tone of his voice that this was as far as I could push him, and felt proud to have won myself that much.

I found out much, much later that he still had an ace up his sleeve. They had hidden a GPS tracker in the electronics of my prosthetic.

The nine clovers were first and foremost a birthday present, but I poured so much attention and detail into her gift this year because I wanted to apologize for the hardship I had put her through at the children’s clinic. It had not been hard to give them away to the strangers on the Gigantic with me, because now I knew that a gift of nine clovers would never be enough to apologize. I would spend the rest of my life atoning for what I had brought upon her.

 

* * *

 

“So,” Aoi said quietly as they made their way up the stairs to A-Deck, “since we’re through all the bullshit pretendin’ stuff…”

Light did not realize the words were directed at him until he felt the touch of fingers on his shoulder.

“You need me to show you where the bracelet scanners are?” Aoi asked.

He gave a small, bitter smile. “I doubt I’ll need that. I’ve been able to locate them thus far just by following the lead,” he said. “The reason I asked for your assistance behind door [4] was only a nervous precaution in an unfamiliar situation.”

Aoi let out a sound that was a mix between a sigh and a groan, and just as he inhaled to speak again, Light lifted up his left hand.

“But,” he said, “in the interest of time… I trust you, Aoi.”

For a moment, Aoi just stared, confirming what he had felt when he grabbed Light’s hand once, hours ago. At a glance his hand had looked ordinary. Only from up close could he see the thin seams in the sheets of textured plastic, and the translucent rubber covering mechanical joints. He took Light’s hand slowly, gently.

The DEAD was only inches from the door numbered [1]. As soon as the scanner recognized Light’s bracelet and gave its third beep, he withdrew his hand and swiftly returned it to his pocket. His lips were tight with a deep discomfort that his haughty air and cocky grins usually hid so well.

The two boys lingered for a moment by the DEAD while Akane wandered on ahead. Aoi held back from asking if Light needed help navigating the room. With his head tilted back and his face still strained, Light took in a slow, deep breath. Aoi held back from asking if he was okay.

“How… do you wanna do this thing?” Aoi asked. “The puzzle thing.”

Light swept away the heavy look on his face and flashed a smile. “There are always physical elements to these puzzles that we’ll be able to locate at least, if not solve on our own,” he said. “Let’s do our best, shall we?”

Aoi stared at his feet and nodded quickly, then added, “Yeah, yeah,” when it occurred to him that Light could not see his initial response. “So… so split up and search…?”

“It’s a rather small room, isn’t it?” Light said. “Or… ah, there’s a second room.”

The door on the other side of the room had barely made a sound when Akane gave it a curious nudge open. As she peered into the wheelhouse, Aoi gave Light a stunned stare. “How the hell do you _do_ that,” he uttered, shaking his head.

Light shot him an even broader, more confident grin before striding effortlessly to the opened door. With a roll of his eyes, Aoi followed. He stayed an arm’s length behind Light, keeping close watch on the path ahead, just in case.

“Oh, there’s quite a bit going on in here, isn’t there,” Light murmured once he crossed through the doorway.

Aoi slipped past Light, then Akane, to make his way to the steering wheel in the center of the room. With a tentative touch he laid his hand on the polished wood, only to find it did not budge when given a push. Light made his way around the circumference of the room, tracing the walls with his right hand. When Akane found a door adjacent to the study locked, she hummed thoughtfully at it, a finger pointed to her lips.

“Aoi, why don’t you and I cover this larger room, while Akane takes the other?” Light suggested.

Aoi could contain his bursting questions no longer. “Where the hell do you get this stuff?” he demanded. “How come you know how big a room is the second you walk into it?”

“Ambient acoustics,” he replied with a shrug. “Even with the carpeting, the first room was very quiet. The echo response and decay was quick. This room’s echo has a greater variance, indicating it’s a larger room with many obstacles in it, which is why I’m taking the time to map it out.”

“You just… hear it?”

Aoi closed his eyes and listened to the gentle hum in the air, and the sound of Light’s steps, and the sound he made when he pushed open the door to the larger enclosure surrounding the inner wheelhouse. “There’s the extra space I detected,” he muttered to himself.

“You can’t just _hear_ that kinda stuff, can you?” Aoi protested. “I thought that was all fake, blind people gettin’ stronger senses after they go blind. I thought that was a myth.”

“It’s mostly a myth, but I had a few natural advantages,” Light replied. “My young age at the time of my accident meant that my occipital lope still had some brain plasticity and could be potentially repurposed for other neurological functions, in a way, not that I’m especially convinced that this has happened. The heart of the matter is that I’ve just always had more sensitive hearing than most. That’s not new.”

“It happened in an accident?”

Light’s right hand snapped to his left elbow and gripped tightly. A chill ran down Aoi’s spine as he realized just how bad an accident it must have been.

He snapped his head over his shoulder to look for Akane, to say her name and ask her about the puzzle to change the subject, but she had vanished. The sight of the empty room behind him rocked his stomach for a moment. “Akane?” he called in a higher voice than usual.

“She walked back into the first room.” Light’s tone was as stiff as his body. “I heard her leave.”

“R-right. Okay, I’m gonna—how about we split it up, like I said, she takes one room, I’ll take—we’ll take this room,” Aoi said, his words running more quickly and loudly than he would have liked. “I’ll go check with her, see if… yeah. You keep, uh, mapping or whatever.”

In the years to come, this next moment would recur in Aoi’s memories. It was unnerving at the time; in retrospect, it was chilling. When he returned to the study, Akane was frozen as if in a trance, holding a stopped pocketwatch in her cupped hands, staring at its unmoving face.

“Akane,” Aoi called out weakly when she did not react to his entrance. He swallowed to clear his throat and tried again louder, “ _Akane_.”

It was as though she was trapped in a single moment in time, and in a way, that was exactly what would happen to this little girl for the next nine years.

Aoi moved on instinct, suddenly breathing harder, when he snatched the pocketwatch out of her open hands. Akane gave a little jolt and a blink when the timepiece vanished from her loose hold, and she slowly turned her head up towards Aoi.

“You… you okay?” he asked.

Her eyes were looking straight through him, but she nodded nonetheless.

“Me and Light’re gonna look through the other room,” he said, pointing over his shoulder. “You gonna be okay in here by yourself?”

She gave the same slow, vacant nod.

There were probably cameras on them, even if he could not find any in a cursory glance at the corners of the ceiling. That knowledge could not keep him from wrapping an arm around her shoulders and hugging her to his chest.

“I love you, okay?” he whispered into her hair. “Just… I’m here if you need me. I love you, Akane.”

He left a quick kiss on the crown of her head before retreating to the wheelhouse, with one last worried glance over his shoulder at the girl standing with one foot in an old-fashioned study and the other in another world entirely.

“Is everything alright?” Light asked from the other side of the glass partition as soon as Aoi returned.

Aoi sighed. “She’s doing her thing again,” he muttered. “Look, long as she’s like that, we got shit to talk about.”

Light let his hand slip from the second steering wheel. It was unusual seeing him look nervous.

“It’s just… what you were talking about before. About the number [9] door.” Aoi turned the pocket watch over in his hand as he made his way to his point. “Just… how’re we gonna do this, y’know? How do we beat door [9]. What’s the way all nine of us get off this ship.”

Light’s face fell to the floor with a heavy sigh.

“C’mon, you gotta have something figured out, right?” Aoi pleaded. “A way we can cheat the numbered doors, or something. Tell me you got something.”

“There’s doubtless a way to cheat the numbered doors,” Light responded calmly, “but I’m not sure we should risk the experimentation required to find it out.”

His hand drifted to his stomach, fingers curling around the fabric of his jacket. Even if she had turned back on it, Akane’s strange premonition had left them both haunted by the possibility of Light’s imminent, violent death.

“Perhaps this is not worth sharing until we can assess exactly what we’re up against,” Light said, “but I do have something of a strategy in mind, albeit a poor one, based only on the information we have now.” Half of his face twitched into a tighter grimace for a second. “No, you probably won’t want to hear any of this, all things considered. Forget it.”

“You can’t do that,” Aoi complained. “You can’t say you got a plan and then say you ain’t gonna tell me what it is. Just tell me.”

Light tossed his head back and expelled another sigh. “Give me a moment to gather my thoughts on the matter,” he said. “Explore the rest of the room. There’s much we haven’t investigated.”

When Light walked away to surround himself with his thoughts, Aoi stepped up to the helm. He had noticed when Light dropped his hand that this steering wheel, unlike the one in the other part of the room, could turn. It gave a satisfying rattle when Aoi gave it a strong whirl. Beyond the wheel, the compass began to move. He caught the spokes of the wheel against his open palm once the needle pointed south.

“So, as far as we are aware, there are no other exits from this ship other than the number [9] door,” Light said. “And the numbered doors accept a maximum of five players. Then the door is locked as long as the players are… [ENGAGED] was the word, I believe.”

Aoi gave the wheel another hard spin out of frustration. “Don’t call us ‘players’ like that,” he grumbled. “I don’t care what that motherfucker said. This isn’t a game.”

“Right. Apologies.” Light pressed a hand to his forehead. “I’m… I suppose I’m trying to maintain a level of detachment while I determine a course of action, because all of our options are awful and I don’t want to confront the reality of the situation.”

While Light was speaking, Aoi caught the wheel at west, then nudged it back towards south. He stopped the wheel at southwest when Light finished his sentence with an unexpected tremor of emotion in his voice.

“As I’ve said, this is just what we know now.” Light’s hand slid down his weary face. “And we know very little. This could change entirely once we encounter the door itself, or if we find any other passages.”

Aoi walked hand over hand through the spokes, idly watching the compass spin past west.

“Our best option at this point still boils down to sending five people through the door and leaving four behind.”

He slowed the wheel to a stop near northwest and breathed out a despondent, “Fucking hell.”

Light gave him a sad smile. “Sorry to disappoint. There is a bit more to the plan, if you’re willing to hear it.”

He gave the wheel another hard spin. “Sure. Fine. Anything you got.”

“You might regret saying that.” Light ran his hand over a device near the helm as he spoke, examining the socket where a lever was missing. “I promise I don’t mean anything malicious by this, but I was going to suggest that you be one of the people to stay behind.”

Aoi reached out his hand to stop the noisy wheel, but something told him he should let it spin until the compass reached east. “The hell _do_ you mean by that, then?!” he demanded.

“I mean that we haven’t been able to find another way out from the inside, but we might be able to find a way in from the outside.” Light folded his arms over the head of the device and leaned his chin on his wrist, giving Aoi a soft smile. “I don’t mean to abandon you. In fact, I would gladly stay behind with you if I could, but I don’t think that’s mathematically viable if Akane is to escape.”

Aoi stared through the spokes of the wheel at the [E] standing center in the compass.

“You do have a strong connection with her, don’t you?” Light said. “I remember you knew which room she was in down in D-Deck when this game began.”

_The last one is north. Thanks, Aoi._

He turned the wheel towards north.

“If we split up the two of you, we’ll have a line of communication between the escaped party and those still trapped,” Light explained. “I suppose Akane could stay behind while you go on ahead to escape, and we’d have the same link, albeit in reverse. I just assumed you’d rather it was you who remained on the boat.”

When Aoi grabbed the wheel to stop it at north, the handle came off in his hand. He swallowed a curse and slammed his other hand on the wheel to stop its rotation, then stared at Light with wide eyes, not breathing, holding the broken piece so tightly his hand shook. Light cocked his head in inquiry. Aoi swallowed hard, and tried to inhale slowly.

“Was I wrong?” Light asked. “Would… you rather escape?”

“N—no, shit, ’course not,” Aoi stammered. “Get her the hell out of here soon as possible. I’ll stay if I gotta.”

When he looked up from his waist after stuffing the handle into his pocket, he settled into a strange daze staring at Light’s calm, gentle smile. He thought of the way this boy had looked when afraid, when he thought perhaps that he might be killed so that others may live.

“You can probably put the piece that fell off into the top of this chadburn, by the way.”

Aoi gave a hard flinch. Light shifted away from the slot and tapped it with a fingertip.

“Fuck you,” Aoi growled. “How the hell’d you…”

Light’s smug grin grew even broader. “You really thought you’d broken it, didn’t you?”

After a soft shove against Light’s arm, Aoi sank the handle into the socket. “You get out of here, too,” he said. “Even without whatever you were saying about the math. I don’t care. You gotta get out.”

Light’s head snapped up, leaving his smile behind. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

“I’m just… thinkin’ about everything Akane was sayin’ before. She thought you were gonna… y’know? So just—just get out quick as you can, just in case. Be careful, alright?”

He nudged Light aside to better see the needle as he used the handle to turn it between [FULL] and [STOP]. Light only moved as much as he was pushed, and the two boys stood shoulder to shoulder in silence awhile. None of the labels called to Aoi the way they had with the compass. Akane had not yet figured out the answers, or she at least was not sending them to him.

“Dunno what to do with this,” he said to Light. “Keep lookin’ around, I guess?”

Light nodded slowly. As soon as Aoi moved away, he felt a touch on his upper arm. When he stopped short and looked over his shoulder, Light jerked his head up, then his hand snapped open and away from Aoi’s arm.

“It’s… easier to follow when I… if that’s alright,” he mumbled, hand hovering over Aoi’s sleeve.

“Yeah, sure,” Aoi said immediately, holding his arm out. “Whatever you need, okay?”

Light’s lips quivered into a smile as he closed his hand around Aoi’s arm again. He stayed a step behind as Aoi led them around the room and back to the inner enclosure of the wheelhouse.

“How did you solve that first part?” Light asked softly. “You were only able to disconnect the spoke of the wheel by turning it in certain directions, correct?”

“Yeah, think so,” Aoi said. His eyes ran over the indentation in the locked door. He fished into his pocket for the item he now had that might match it.

“But how did you know?” Light asked. “Are you and your sister _both_ able to—?”

“N-no, no, Jesus, I’m not on her level,” Aoi said. “She was… she was sendin’ that to me. She got it from wherever the hell she’s gettin’ her shit, and then she just…”

He pressed the pocketwatch into the shape on the door. Just as he thought, it was a perfect fit, yet nothing happened.

“Do you have any idea what’s happening with her? Can I ask?” Light’s hand squeezed a bit around Aoi’s arm. “While she was transmitting her thoughts, did you catch a glimpse of what she was…?”

“Listen, Light, whatever this psychic bullshit is, she’s… she’s the queen of it, alright?” Aoi’s voice fell into a low whisper. “She’s…”

He had seen the entire world mapped out in her head before, from the beginning of time to the ends, the many, many ends. It was a glimpse he could not remember without his head reeling. The vague memory that remained felt more like a dream than reality. Only by consciously telling himself that he had seen his sister standing before him in real life, telepathically telling him, _Do you feel what I feel?_ did he know that it had really happened.

“She’s gotta get off this ship,” Aoi uttered. “Before the fuckers running this little sideshow find out what she can really do.”

“The faster, the better. For all of us,” Light exhaled. “It’ll give us more time to find an escape route for everyone else, as well.”

Aoi flipped the pocketwatch around and tried inserting it backwards, still to no avail. He left it sitting in the indentation and stared at its unticking hands, at the stalled moment in time. The faraway look in his sister’s eyes would not leave his mind.

“I’m… I’m gonna check on her a sec,” Aoi mumbled.

Despite Aoi lunging for the other door, Light’s grip on his arm did not falter.

It took a moment to find her when she was no more than a quivering puddle on the floor—just hunched, shaking shoulders over her little folded legs. Aoi shot across the room and crashed down to his knees beside her. Something told him his hands might pass right through her if he tried to touch her.

“It’s not me,” she whispered, holding her head in her hands. “It can’t be me.”

Aoi scarcely recognized his own voice when he called out, “Akane?”

She shook her head, her fingers gripping tighter. “I’m _there_. I’m still alive,” she breathed. “It’s not me. It’s not me. It’s not _me_.”

When Akane had foretold of Light’s death, Aoi had a mental image of the remnants of a human body torn to bits, surrounded by shreds of his dark blue jacket and splatters of blood. Now he was imagining the body much smaller, and the blue jacket became a pink sweater, but the blood was the same, blood coating the floor and the walls.

He pulled her tight into her arms, uttering a plaintive, “Akane, what the _hell_ is happening to you?”

No matter how fast she seemed to grow, she was still so small against his chest, and she seemed even smaller still when her little body shook with a sob. He was used to holding her while she wept, but she had never sounded so terrified before, or maybe he was reading fear in her sobs because he was the one who was scared, so scared, holding her tight so she would not feel his own arms shaking.

“I wanna get out of here,” she cried. “I wanna just—just _wake up_ already.”

When Light’s hand feathered across his back, Aoi sucked in a sudden gasp. Light dropped to one knee, one arm across Aoi’s shoulders and one arm across Akane’s, and Aoi remembered to breathe.

“I can’t… My head hurts,” she whimpered. “I can’t…”

Light ran a slow, gentle hand through her hair.

“There’s so much going on. I can’t—there’s too much, I can barely keep track. I’m—I’m _seeing_ so many things, it’s all…”

She grabbed fistfuls of Aoi’s jacket and clutched them close to her damp cheeks. Light rubbed his thumb in circles against her shoulder.

“Why am I seeing so many things?” she squeaked.

“Morphogenetic field theory.”

Aoi shivered at the feel of Light’s breath, the closeness of his voice. Akane lifted her head from Aoi’s chest to turn to Light.

“Did either of you meet Gentarou Hongou when you were screened?” Light asked. “During a ganzfeld experiment, or some other similar test of telepathy. He mentioned to me that the experiments were to study the theory of the telepathic method via morphic resonance.”

“What the hell is…”

Aoi stopped moving his lips when he realized his voice was not coming out.

“I don’t know how much Gentarou Hongou knows about the morphogenetic fields. I’m sure he must know at least as much as I’ve gathered through the cursory research I did on the topic after I heard him call the phenomenon by name,” Light went on. “It’s a complex theory with a lot of very broad implications, but Hongou is only studying the effect of one-to-one communication—probably to simplify matters, like isolating elements in a system when studying mechanical physics. The result is something akin to telepathy, between two individuals acting as transmitter and receiver.”

While Akane’s focus was elsewhere, Aoi rubbed his eyes. He gave a dazed stare at the streaks of water on the backs of his fingers.

“But, as with physics, the reality isn’t so simple,” Light said. “Think of the morphogenetic field as a unified, invisible plane where thoughts and ideas are… encoded and decoded, in a way, by all living things, usually in subtle, unconscious ways. The theory goes that our behaviors, our instincts, even aspects of our DNA are actually governed by a history of patterns encoded in the morphogenetic field. In the telepathic method, some individuals have stronger tendencies towards writing to the field versus reading from the field—in a fully abstracted representation of morphogenetic communication, those people are classified as transmitters and receivers. Using that terminology, everyone in Building Q—perhaps with one exception—is a transmitter, sending information to us, the receivers.”

Aoi was barely listening to Light anymore. His words were too thick and heavy and so was the air in this room. He was speaking for Akane’s sake, and she sat at rapt attention, eager to swallow every drop of his distraction. She gave a long, slow blink as his fingers trailed down the length of her hair again.

“But reality isn’t so black-and-white. Nona, for instance, is able to both receive and transmit via the field, as is her sister Ennea,” Light continued. “And while the facilitators of this experiment are focused on our ability to communicate in pairs with our siblings, that’s almost antithetical to the main principles of morphic resonance. The morphogenetic field is a link to all consciousness not just throughout the world, but throughout all of time. Skilled transmitters are theoretically able to influence all humans—all intelligent _life_ that has ever existed, or will ever exist, in the entire universe.”

He lifted his hand to Akane’s cheek. His thumb touched the path of a tear and rubbed it away.

“Skilled receivers, on the other hand, are able to _read_ the experiences of all life throughout the universe,” he said softly. “Akane, this may be what’s happening to you right now.”

“But _why_ now?” Aoi’s voice was fragile, but his racing heart would let him be silent no longer. “Why’s this all happening to her all of a sudden? She’s never been like this before.”

“If I’m correct, it’s because Gentarou Hongou is actively attempting to induce access to the field using environmental factors.” Light crossed his hand over to Akane’s opposite cheek to wipe away those tears, too. “I don’t know all of the factors that increase our abilities, but I’m certain that they’re the reason we’ve been trapped in a sinking ship.”

Aoi bristled at the chilling reminder of the time limit hanging over their heads. He thought of the pocketwatch in the door in the wheelhouse.

Almost in unison, the three children shifted their weight. Aoi felt Akane sliding closer to him and tried to nudge her closer to Light. Light, on the other hand, was withdrawing his arms from both of their shoulders, giving Akane a gentle push towards her brother as he eased to his feet. Aoi was also trying to ease to his feet at the same time.

“Where’re you…?” Aoi started to ask, following with his eyes as Light rose.

“Stay here with Akane.” Light gave Aoi’s shoulder a soft touch with his right hand. “I’ll continue searching the wheelhouse in the meantime.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake— _you’ll_ search the wheelhouse?”

Aoi grabbed Light’s hand as it retreated from his shoulder. He yanked down on it to pull Light back to the floor, and to pull himself to his feet.

“You’re doin’ a better fuckin’ job than me, anyways, makin’ sure she’s— I don’t know shit about this morpho-whatsit junk,” Aoi grumbled. “ _I’ll_ search the wheelhouse.”

Light and Akane both called a soft, “Aoi,” after him as he stormed to the door. Akane’s fingers slipped loose from the hem of his jacket. Light’s fingers slipped down his palm and sent a chill up his spine.

He wondered if Light’s superior hearing was enough to detect that, as soon as he was through the door, he sank to his shaking knees and let go of hot, shuddering air in quick bursts, too quick, so fast that his head felt swollen even when he pressed it to the floor with his hands crossed over the back of his neck. Something was wrong with him, he knew, some sickness or condition he did not have time to worry about, something that gripped his stomach every time he felt afraid or sometimes just out of nowhere, something that made his whole body ache and scream like it was going to kill him, and after enough minutes stuck in this state without dying he started to wish it would kill him already.

“What does he want?” he heard Akane ask. “Why does he want to study this?”

Light’s response came after a moment of hesitation. He could hear Aoi from the other side of the door, Aoi was sure of it.

“I’m not particularly worried about what Gentarou Hongou wants for himself,” Light finally responded. “But I doubt he is acting alone, even if he is spearheading the effort. To get what he wants, Hongou will need to learn how to access and potentially manipulate the morphogenetic field. If he accomplishes that goal, even if for his own harmless motives, I’m _very_ concerned about what others in his organization will do.”

Aoi choked on nothing and a tear fell from the tip of his nose to the floor with a miniature splash. He had to get Akane out of here. He had to get her away from these men before they figured out what she was really capable of, before they caught her and hurt her, abused her like Hongou once did. If Light could call Hongou harmless, the others in his league would kill her.

_Someone is going to die on this ship. A girl._

“Stop,” he whispered into his hands, fingertips catching his dripping tears as he blinked. “Stop, stop, stop, stop. Just fucking stop.”

The problem with knowing that his sister could telepathically communicate with him, and that she could see the thoughts of all mankind, was that he never knew whether the voices running through his head were from her or from the dark corners of his mind that conjured up his nightmares. He covered his ears and murmured mindlessly, drowning out Light from the other room, drowning out her, or this shadow of her that he had created, whichever it was.

“Stop. Dead. Stop. No, no, no. Full… half… s-slow…”

Unable to stray too far from the walls, he clawed his way to his feet and to the other side of the room. His vision was pulsing and he could feel his heart beating too fast in his chest. The wooden handle on top of the engine order telegraph felt good in his palm as he squeezed it, running through the pattern playing in his head like a nervous chant.

_Full. Half. Slow. Full. Half. Dead. Stop._

A sense of helplessness sank into his bones. He wanted to be the one protecting his little sister, especially when she was so scared, yet she was still the one helping him.

The board by the locked exit lit up with new locations and a new time, and he knew to look for the time. He pried the pocketwatch back out of the door and turned, turned, turned, turned, turned. Three o’clock was far away from where the clock had stopped, but he did not mind. His fingers moved slowly. He breathed with the motion of the hands spinning round, round, round.

As he carefully set the second hand to ten past the minute, he heard Light.

“Alright. Tell me which way to go.”

Akane’s voice was an incomprehensible murmur from a room away, until it suddenly rose into a squeal as she cried, “No, no, wait!”

“Not forward?”

“Turn left first. …No, not that far, wait. Back…”

“Oh, _back_?”

“Noooo!”

“Goodness, Akane, you’re terribly indecisive.”

She was still caught in a helpless giggle by the time Light made it out to the wheelhouse under her direction. She was riding piggyback on his shoulders, face flushed with a grin. Under the hair in his face, Light’s smile was so warm, so genuine.

Aoi’s mouth did not yet remember how to smile again, but it was trying. “What the hell’re you doin’,” he teased, rubbing at his eyes before Akane could find any traces of the tears he had shed.

“I’m helping,” Akane said, squeezing her arms tighter around Light’s shoulders. “I’m guiding him through the—the rugged terrain.”

“Buncha goofballs,” Aoi muttered, reaching out to pinch her cheek, to which she squealed again. “You just been slackin’ off while I solved this whole puzzle by myself, huh?”

“Ah, yes, apologies.” Light bowed his head even lower to Aoi, then lifted it up towards Akane’s ear and stage-whispered, “You’ll have to go back to solving every single other puzzle for him. He can’t handle more than this, on account of his… delicate constitution.”

Akane buried her mouth in her sleeve to stifle a high-pitched giggle.

“ _Whose_ delicate constitution?” Aoi shot back. “Oh, I’ll show you delicate.”

Aoi stuffed his hands between Light’s back and Akane’s stomach, wiggling his fingers against her belly. As she screeched with terrified laughter, she wriggled so much that she and Light could no longer hold onto each other. Although Light had a pinched look to his expression from the noise in his ears, he was wearing the biggest grin Aoi had ever seen on his face. When Akane slumped to the floor, and after Aoi dug his fingers into her sides for one last relentless attack, he slid his arms underneath her. It had been years since he last scooped her up off of her feet and into his arms, and she was bigger now, but she still fit perfectly against his chest.

“Thanks for all the help, kiddo,” he murmured into her ear.

She went stiff in his arms for a jarring moment. He missed Light asking him if the exit was unlocked, then trying the door anyway and finding that it now opened. Although Aoi slowly let Akane down to her feet, she did not yet move toward the opened door, not before grabbing the end of his sleeve in her small fist and tugging. The thick curtain of her hair masked her face as she hung her head low.

“You… you’ve been taking care of me for all these years,” she said, her words slow and quiet. “That’s more than I could ever ask for. I… I _want_ to help you, too.”

She buried her face in his blue scarf as she circled her arms around his waist.

“I love you so much, Aoi,” she whispered.

He wanted to smile. He wanted to muss up her hair and tell her he loved her, too. But her arms were so tight and desperate, her voice so weak, that it sounded like she was saying goodbye.

“C’mon,” he mumbled, gripping her shoulder hard as he ushered her to the open doorway. “You’re alright. C’mon.”

Light had made his way across the room already. His fingers were at the end of the metal plaque on the door. He looked pale when he turned his head towards the sound of footsteps.

“Some kinda old-timey communications bay?” Aoi guessed, glancing at the walls full of tape reels and the telegraph key sitting out on the desk.

“A good place to keep surveillance, one might note,” Light said, his throat dry. “Do you see what this says?”

He dropped his hand from the door and took a step back. Aoi squinted at the sign reading [CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS].

“At the start of the game, Gentarou Hongou said he would be our guide on this ship,” Light said. “It’s possible that this is what he meant.”

Aoi’s stomach dropped. “You think… you think he’s in there?”

“We’re very near the end of this game. We’ve encountered every numbered door except [9].” Light folded his arms across his chest, the fingers of this right hand bloodless white around his left elbow. “If he wanted to make an appearance, now certainly could be the time. My only concern is _why_ he would want to appear—what he stands to gain from this encounter with just the three of us.”

Light held his prosthetic. Aoi held his sister.

Akane, on the other hand, shrugged Aoi off of her shoulders and walked up to hold the doorknob.

As the door squeaked open, Light stayed tense until he heard Aoi huff out a laugh—nervous as it was, it told him that there was no one in the room. Light slipped past Akane as she hesitated in the doorway. Aoi thought she was staring at the details of the room, until he was right beside her and found that her eyes were fixed on the middle of the floor, unmoving, unblinking.

“He may not be here now, but _someone_ was here.” Light thumped his hand against the back of the desk chair. “The seat is warm.”

“Oh, holy sh—Light, _on_ the desk,” Aoi exhaled, creeping closer to the setup of small monitors. “These are all video feeds of… these two are that big central staircase, one on each deck. There’s that stupid painting in the second-class cabin—you were there for that, too, right? And that’s the big hospital room down on C-Deck…”

“Hongou was absolutely the one watching us,” Light said. “He was seeing and responding to us in the beginning of the game. He was here.”

“So where’d he run off to?”

Aoi looked over his shoulder. Akane had not moved from the doorway.

* * *

Hongou had watched the players with bracelets [1], [4], and [5] make their way into the wheelhouse, tidied up his workspace, and locked the door behind him as he left. No further observation was going to change his mind, and now he had unexpected business to attend to.

* * *

“Okay, we got… crap ton o’ li’l notebook papers, look through those in a sec. There’s also a… damn, I don’t even know what this thing is. Is this a… a key?”

Akane grabbed it out of his hand while he was examining the stitching on the leather handle. She had only started moving again about a minute ago, when she finally left the doorway to tap a message out on the telegraph key. “I do know a fair bit of morse code, but I can’t parse the meaning of the message without spaces between the letters,” Light had muttered to himself afterwards. “It did sound as though the transmission started with a ‘V’, which was used to signal ‘victory’ in World War II-era messages. But the following letter sounded like a ‘D’ for ‘defeat’.”

Her face still looked so pale.

“Guess she knows what it’s for,” Aoi mumbled as she returned to the captain’s quarters with the key she had taken from him.

Something fell loose from the papers in Aoi’s hands and gave a soft clatter as it fell to the desk. Light swept it up before Aoi could reach it; their fingers brushed against each other in the race for the small card. Finding nothing of interest when he slid his thumb over the smooth surface, Light flipped the card from his palm and extended it to Aoi between his middle and index fingers. Aoi gently pulled it free.

“Looks like one of those special keys with the symbols on ’em,” he said, examining the symbol on the card. “Ain’t seen this one anywhere yet.”

“Anything else past that?” Light asked. “Or just these papers.”

Aoi did not respond for a moment. On top of the first page, written in an adult’s large and hasty hand, was the header:

[1] – LIGHT FIELD

“Is… your last name… Field?” Aoi asked. “Light Field?”

Light’s body went stiff. He did not need to answer, because the notes scrawled underneath his name told Aoi he could not be wrong.

_the blind boy. prosthetic arm. tall. dark blue jacket._

“What is this,” Light demanded.

“I’m readin’, I’m readin’,” Aoi said. “This page’s got your name on it, is all. Lemme…”

He flipped through the next three pages and confirmed his suspicions.

[4] – AOI KURASHIKI

_white hair boy. school uniform with blue scarf. foul-mouthed._

Aoi could not hold back a little laugh. When he flipped to the next page, however, his smile immediately fell.

[5] – VIOLET GORDON

_girl with pink sweater & red necktie_

“Hey, Light, you see all the stuff your sister can see, right?” Aoi mumbled. “Is that girl Violet—or if she’s goin’ by Akane, whatever—the girl who’s really supposed to be here, what’s she look like?”

“Are these files? About us?” Light asked.

“Kinda? More like handwritten notes,” Aoi said. “Like, it says you’re ‘the blind boy’, with… uh, ‘tall’, and ‘dark blue jacket’. I’m just wonderin’—it’s got notes for this girl Violet Gordon, so I’m wonderin’ if that’s how they got mixed up, if she was just wearin’ the same stuff as Akane or somethin’.”

“Written descriptions of our physical appearances? Why not photographs, if—” With a violent, hateful twitch in his expression, Light cut himself off, before muttering, “Gentarou Hongou.”

“What about him this time?”

“Never mind. Violet, you were saying—I don’t know if I caught what Violet was wearing,” Light said, holding a hand to his forehead. “My sister was much more interested in her white hair, evidently. That’s all I could see of her.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” In the middle of laying the pages out on the desk, Aoi let his head fall. “Seriously? She’s got white hair?”

“Well, I’m sure it’s dyed,” Light said with a puzzled frown. “Is there something wrong?”

“Of course there’s—!”

It occurred to Aoi that Light did not know that his hair was white. As soon as he realized this fact, Light shrugged and added, “I’ve always found the look aesthetically pleasing, personally.”

A laugh burst out of Aoi’s chest that sounded much too nervous. His face felt hot and heavy with blood even after he raised it back up and tried to focus on the writing in front of him.

“Is there anything else in the notes?” Light asked.

Aoi paused. “I think it’s every puzzle we’ve solved.”

Light’s head gave a sharp turn.

“Yeah. I’m readin’ yours.”

_door [4] – no sibling_

_door [3] – password. spoke about the broom cipher_

_using morphic resonance with sighted sibling to navigate. VERY important to study—receiving visuals. overall bright & talented. perfect candidate_

“Perfect candidate?” Light repeated with a slight shudder.

Aoi, too, felt icy chills as he read the summary paragraph aloud. He set down Light’s notes. Like seeing an ugly car crash but not knowing how to look away, he set his trembling hand on the fifth page in the series.

_door [4] – familiarity with room layout? dog painting solution_

_door [7] – safe password, locker puzzle, john/lucy weights solution—entire room!!_

_connection to the field seems to be growing more secure with time. performing even better than in initial diagnostic tests. ideally selected as a candidate because laboratory results were never this rewarding_

His voice was shaking by the end of her notes. Light had tried to lay a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off with a violent jerk.

“The hell is a candidate.” Aoi stared at the page with fiery hate as he set it back down on the desk. “What the _hell_ is a candidate.”

“Do me a favor and read your own file next,” Light said.

_door [4] –_

_door [7] –_

_disappointing. seemed so promising in laboratory results—though he was dishonest and uncooperative throughout the tests. may have been a fluke or a fraud_

This time Aoi actually elbowed Light in the ribs when he again put his hand on Aoi’s shoulder. Aoi jabbed a finger at the paper, smearing the ink, as he spoke.

“Fuck you. Just, fuck you. Holy fuck. Fuck. _You._ ”

“Confirms that only skilled receivers are being considered as candidates.” Light gave a cough to correct his strained voice, rubbing his chest where Aoi had struck him. “Try Nona’s.”

[8] – NONA KASHIWABARA

_girl with ponytail. green dress._

_door [5] – no sibling_

_door [8] – copied same nonsense solutions as those idiots in building Q_

_N.B. this is the child facilitating communication b/w building Q and gigantic. seems to have a 2-way connection to sibling? certain candidate_

“Gigantic,” Light repeated, several times. “Interesting… This _is_ a rather large ship, outfitted with historic artifacts. The boat we’re on could be a replica of the Titanic—its sister ship, the Gigantic.”

“What’s ‘N.B.’?” Aoi muttered.

“ _Nota bene_. Latin. It means ‘note well’. He’s an intellectual.”

Light rolled his eyes in disgust, which Aoi found particularly amusing.

“Can you read the summary for each pl—each person?” Light asked. “Those we haven’t read already.”

“You mean the line where he describes what we look like or the shit at the bottom about who’s a candidate?”

“I meant the latter, but read the former as well, purely to sate my curiosity about what all of you look like.”

Ren was _messy hair, blue jacket_ , but with _light_ appended before _blue_ as an afterthought, since the original description was applicable to Light, as well. The summary read _talented but frustratingly slow. possible candidate?_

Hideyoshi was _small boy with glasses & green sweater_. There were no mentions of candidacy on his page; the notes called his successes _sporadic at best_.

Aoi had skipped his own physical description when he first read his own notes, and he was certainly not about to read it now. Instead, on a whim, he said, “Oh, what’s this? ‘Aoi Kurashiki… strikingly handsome, unfathomably good-looking, just drop-dead gorgeous’. Well, if you say so.”

Light raised his eyebrows and gave a sly smile. “I’m sure you are,” he replied in a voice too much like warm butter to be joking around.

Aoi folded his arms. “Okay, dude, kinda gay.”

“Well.” Light shrugged, still grinning. “If you say so.”

It was much too confident a response. In retrospect, it seemed obvious from the very beginning. But Aoi was still young and still calibrating his sense for this sort of thing. As it was, this was the moment in which it dawned on him that Light Field might actually be gay.

This was a loaded revelation for a boy who thought he might be bisexual and who had circumstantially held Light’s hand about three times by this point.

“Are we up to Yuuki, now?” Light asked. “You’ve already read yours and Akane’s.”

“Y-yeah. One sec.”

Yuuki was _too thin girl, school uniform_ , who was _so utterly unconvinced of capacity for resonance, it seems to impede her ability_.

Nobu was _fat boy, red sweater_. _throughout tests his abilities seem focused on nonvisual elements which makes him not the ideal candidate._

Claire, the _small redhead girl with overalls_ , had a shocking number of notes of puzzles she had solved. _if american boy is chosen, send this too._

“Send,” Light repeated. “Where are we being sent to?”

“H… hold on. There’s some other stuff he scribbled on her page,” Aoi said. “Down at the bottom, he wrote—he started to write… I think it’s [1 + 2 + 5 + 8], but then he crossed it out. Then he’s got [1 + 5 + 8 + 9]… with a… a… he… he circled it. A [+ 4] at the end.”

“ _Oh_. Oh, God, Aoi.”

Aoi already found it ominous enough to find his bracelet number not only written, but circled on the page. His heart started pounding when he heard Light’s weak voice speaking those haunted words. Light’s cloudy eyes were open, his hand clutching the lapels and zippers of his jacket in a tense, shaking hold.

“What the hell?” Aoi breathed. “What is it?”

Light shook his head. “Maybe it’s not… are there any more. Any other combinations written down.”

Aoi read off the last line. “[1 + 2 + 7 + 8 + 9]. The [2] and the [7] are underlined,” he said. “He wrote something below it… ‘or swap out [4] and [5]’.”

With a shallow breath in that hiked up his shoulders, Light pressed his face into both hands.

“Light, what the fuck is it. Jesus Christ, talk to me.”

He grabbed Light’s shoulders with such force that it rocked his slender, quaking body. Light’s mouth opened about two seconds before he could make a sound. “Digital roots,” he forced out. “Look at the digital roots, Aoi.”

For the line he had crossed out, it was [7]. For the other two equations, it was [9].

“Aoi, he’s deciding who will go through door [9],” Light uttered. “That’s who the candidates are.”

He had crossed out the first equation because there was no way to complete it. He had circled the [4] not because it was of any particular interest, but because it was the number that would complete the digital root. He had tried another equation because he did not particularly want the [4] there at all.

“He doesn’t want you to go,” Light whispered, and now his hand was clutching Aoi’s, shaking and sweating. “He’s choosing who’s going to live and who’s going to die, and he wants you to die. And if you die, Akane dies with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	13. Interference

Ren had no idea where she was when she woke up. There was a dull throb in her head, which was pressed back against something cold and hard. Her bleary eyes turned towards a dark, unfamiliar ceiling.

“Ren? Are you okay?”

Yuuki’s voice was the context. Ren remembered this room, this horrible room.

“Hey, c’mon, say something. Ren?”

Ren wrinkled her nose. “Something.”

“What—what happened?” asked Hideyoshi.

“What happened?” Ren repeated with a frown.

Her body would rather have succumbed to the sweet embrace of death than sit up, judging by the cold, nauseating pain crawling up every inch of her when she moved. Only after a few seconds of letting the ache settle into her bones could she feel Hideyoshi’s and Yuuki’s hands on her shoulders, waist, and head, supporting her unsteady weight.

“You did the chair puzzle thing right,” Yuuki was saying. “I didn’t even—it was all fine, and then you just…”

“I think—I think you—you fainted,” Hideyoshi said.

The room smelled like blood, but the exit looked so far away, and there were stairs in the way, stairs going up, of all directions. Ren closed her eyes when it was too much to look at without her head spinning.

“I don’t feel good,” she mumbled.

 

* * *

 

They left Akane to keep watch over the Saturn elevators at the base of the central staircase, while they would stand guard at the Mercury elevators. As soon as the Jupiter door shut them into the long, empty hall to the hospital room with a heavy clang, Light pulled Aoi closer to him and whispered, “You need to pretend you’re resonating.”

Aoi shuddered away from the hot tickle of Light’s breath drifting down his neck. “Pretend I’m _what_?” he hissed back, rubbing his skin through his scarf.

“Resonating. Receiving from a sibling in the other building.” Light’s hand sank into Aoi’s shoulder to keep him close to his hushed voice. “We don’t have much time. Door [9] is the only door left. We’re bound to find it soon.”

“Oh, give it up, Light,” Aoi snapped. “I’m fucked, alright? I’m fucked.”

Light yanked Aoi back when he started to lean away. “It’s for your _sister_ , Aoi.” He breathed his words through gritted teeth. “I’ll help you. If Clover tells me anything, I’ll—”

“He’s not even fucking watching us anymore!” Aoi yelled, shoving Light away by the arms. “We went to his little hideout, he ain’t fuckin’ there, he locked up his stupid notes inside the drawer, he’s done. _I’m_ done.”

All at once, Light’s face shifted, from the dark, serious expression to something pale and desperate. “You can’t give up, Aoi,” he uttered. “Please.”

Heat rose in Aoi’s face as his voice climbed higher. “What good’s it gonna fuckin’ do, anyway?!” he screamed. “What, you want Ren and Nobu to die instead o’ me?! How the hell’s that any better?!”

“ _Please_ , Aoi, I…”

In the middle of his sentence, his eyes shot open and his head drifted up, jaw sinking. He let out a soft, heavy breath that Aoi only realized was a laugh when he saw the corners of Light’s mouth lifting. He brought his hand to his head and laughed again, and again.

“What the hell, man?” Aoi asked.

Light held out his right hand, fumbling in the air until he found a shoulder, then he pulled. Even before a word was spoken, Aoi knew then that it was going to be alright. The last time he had felt so safe and warm in the embrace of another must have been when his parents were still alive.

 

* * *

 

Maybe it was the lingering scent of incense, or the warm glow of the candles lighting the chapel, that made it seem as though the great door [9] had been waiting for them.

If that were the case, then the lesser door [9] tucked at the other end of the room was sneering at them, waiting to burst into laughter once they finally got the joke.

Claire stood in the center of the chapel, turning her head back and forth between the two doors. “What?” she asked, her voice hushed.

_“Why… are there two?” Ennea asked._

_“There has to be two,” Clover said. “See, five people can go in one door, and four people can go in the other, and we’ll all get out.”_

_“Oh my God,” Kenshin uttered. “Oh my God, I didn’t even think of that. Holy crap, what if there was only—Clover, did you know that this whole time? That there had to be two doors?”_

_“Uh-uh. I didn’t think of it till just now.” She shrugged. “It just kinda… came to me, I guess.”_

Nobu pretended he was rubbing stray coal dust from his eyes. It was shaky, but his smile was brighter than the lights of all the candles combined.

 

* * *

 

“Then what even’s the point of the key we found?” Ren asked, lifting her head. “If we already found door [9]…”

With a stern glare, Aoi snapped and pointed back down at the trickling faucet. “Less talking, more drinking,” he ordered.

Though the water running through the pipes in the hospital room was tepid and had a worrying metallic taste, it soothed Ren’s dry throat. She leaned her elbows against the counter, cupped her hands under the stream, and drank as much as her weary stomach could tolerate.

“But—but Ren’s right,” Nobu protested. “There’s gotta be a reason, right? There’s gotta be something important behind that door.”

The Sun key twisted and twirled in Yuuki’s worried fingertips. “I think those [9] doors are a trap,” she said.

“There’s no reason to suspect they would be a trap,” Light said with a confident shake of his head, while Yuuki’s grip tightened on the key. “With that said, I still agree that we should investigate the Sun door, since time isn’t a concern. We’ve located the number [9] doors and I believe we still have over three hou—”

The echo of the clock from the central staircase cut him off, and the room went silent until the third and final ring died out.

“Alright, then we have _exactly_ three hours left,” Light corrected. He shrugged. “Still plenty of time to make a thorough check of the place.”

“Plenty of time to get hydrated before we keep going,” Aoi said, pointing again at the sink. “I don’t want any more o’ you kids fainting on me, alright? Everybody line up and take a… take a fuckin’…”

He paused, and blinked. With water spilling from the corners of her wide sneer, Ren lifted her head from the faucet to complete the sentence: “Take a fuckin’ sip, babes?”

Aoi’s shoulders shook with a silent laugh. He caught his head in one hand as a helpless grin crept onto his face. “Take a fuckin’ sip, babes.”

 

* * *

 

The chatty crowd of nine walked around the central staircase on C-Deck. When Claire dashed up to the Saturn elevators and gave the call button an excited slap with her little palm, a murmur of laughter rippled through the rest of the group as they waved her back. “Not yet,” Nobu called with a grin. “Come back!”

Once the children on the Gigantic realized that victory was in reach—that the number [9] doors were waiting for them in the chapel whenever they were ready to claim their prize—they lost their fear.

“<Not yet,>” Aoi translated. “Light, she’s tryna go back to door [9], can you…?”

“<Claire, we’re going to go see what’s in this door first, then we’ll come back,>” Light explained.

“<But…>” Claire pouted as she plodded back to join the congregation around Yuuki as she unlocked the Sun door. “<But that’s not what the…>”

It is harder to notice absence than presence. When fear faded away, so too did the quiet murmur from an unseen field. Claire was the only one who still had a strong enough connection to realize they were making a mistake.

_Holly could not understand a lick of the conversation, but she knew that Hideki was arguing about the key in his hand, and that he was outnumbered. She also recognized when he gave in: his eyes rolled hard as his shoulders fell, and he groaned something monosyllabic._

_“ <Finally!>” Clover sighed, tugging Holly’s sleeve. “<We’re gonna go to door [9] now. We’re gonna get out of here.>”_

In the long, narrow hallway beyond the Sun door, their voices echoed louder as they grew more and more excited. There was talk of the first thing they would eat when they got out, and how they were going to brag to all of their friends that they had psychic powers, and when Ren lagged behind the group, Nobu slowed down to join her and ask if she was okay, and they smiled at each other as they walked. Neither Light, holding Aoi’s left arm, nor Akane, holding his right hand, saw him shoot smiles over his shoulders at them both.

They were startled but awed when the huge, metal doors at the end of the hall opened automatically as they approached. Their voices rose from hushed murmurs to excited shouts when Yuuki pointed out the little submarine floating in a pool at the far end of the huge room.

“Oh my gosh, can we all fit in there?” Nona gasped.

“Does it—does it lead out of here?” Hideyoshi asked. “The water, does it—?!”

“We _did_ it!” Yuuki cried, holding her face and squirming with sheer joy and relief. “We’re gonna get out of here, oh my God!”

Aoi had once heard a gunshot before, and he was the only one. It was like the bang of a firecracker, but too close, and the sound fell eerily dead in the air, as dead as the body on the news the next morning. It was at their first apartment after losing their parents’ house, when money was tight and he was afraid to let Akane go outside at night. The noise rattled in his chest with every frantic heartbeat. It did not die away until he crept into her room and saw her sleeping, heard her softly breathing.

Now he did not know how times he had heard a gunshot, because they were all going off so fast.

The kids scattered and threw themselves to the floor; no one could tell where the roar of gunfire was coming from when it echoed off of the high walls, and then the cacophony of bullets was mingling with the ear-rending sounds of children screaming for their lives. Aoi lunged for his sister, braced her on all sides with his pitiful little body. His eyes darted around the room for somewhere to hide her away. Behind him, he saw the pinpoint flashes of the machine gun firing and a blind boy holding his hands over his ears and shaking as he sank to the ground.

Aoi hoisted Akane up with one arm and grabbed Light’s sleeve with the other. Light jerked violently away, but Aoi held fast, yelling, “It’s _me_ , Light, it’s me, I’m gonna get you outta here, c’mon, _c’mon_!”

With no strength left to run, Ren collapsed to the floor. When Nobu could not drag her away from danger, they huddled together, holding their hands over their heads. Nona threw herself and Claire against the wall, hugging the little girl to her chest. Hideyoshi screamed Yuuki’s name from the ground when he peeked through his fingers and saw her still racing to the submarine.

She blinked tears of fright from her eyes as she pounded her feet across the floor. Her breath tasted like blood as she gasped through the sprinting. She lifted her head for just a split second to see where she was going, and then she stopped dead. Her legs turned to jelly, then crumpled, as the cracks in the glass and the bulletholes blurred away behind another wave of tears rushing to her eyes.

Face red with rage, a man in a pinstripe suit and a trenchcoat marched into the room, still sinking his finger into the trigger of his machine gun. He pointed it not at the children, but at the submarine.

He was not satisfied until he had unloaded half of the clip into the vessel, rendering it a useless hunk of metal. The air was still ringing with the sound. His nostrils flared with every heavy breath as he glowered at the submarine, watching it slowly gurgle and recede back into the water. The tail of his trenchcoat flared out as he whirled around, seething at every miserable child scattered at his feet.

Hideyoshi was close enough to see the flecks of spit fly from his mouth as he spoke.

“Your goal is _not_ to escape,” he roared, baring his teeth. “Your goal is to _win_ the Nonary Game. _Escaping_ is not _victory_.”

They knew the sound of his desperate voice. They recognized his face from the trials at the children’s clinic. This man was Gentarou Hongou.

“If you try to _cheat_ your way to escape, I _will_ stop you.” Hongou lifted his gun into the air, lips twitching. “You will play the Nonary Game, and you will win the Nonary Game, or you will _die_.”

“But we…!”

Hongou snapped his arm out to aim the gun at the dissenting voice. Nobu yelped and pressed himself flat against the ground, holding his hands over his head. When he pried one eyelid open, he was still staring into the deep, black hole of the barrel of a gun. Hongou narrowed his eyes, daring the boy to speak.

“But we found the number [9] doors!” Nobu squeaked. “We—we _won_ the game, didn’t we?! Door [9]’s the exit, isn’t it?!”

“I _knew_ it!” Yuuki grabbed asymmetric fistfuls of her untidy hair. “Is it all just a trap?!”

Hongou let the gun fall back to his side. He chuckled.

“It’s no trap, my dear,” he replied with music in his voice. “Beyond door [9], you will find the exit. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

He had a gentle, pleasant smile, a genuine smile.

“However, that’s not to say it’s a direct exit to the outside,” he said. “After all, the doors are down on the lower decks, aren’t they? You _will_ have to make your way upstairs to escape. And that is certainly part of the game.”

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a handheld radio.

“Nijisaki,” he said.

The crackling voice on the radio responded, “ _I’m in position._ ”

“At will.”

The shudder that rippled through the room touched everyone but a clueless Aoi Kurashiki.

_“Freeze.”_

_The deep voice of a man cut through the chatter of children in the chapel strategizing about which doors to go through. With a collective gasp, they spun towards the door, and found themselves facing an assault rifle, and a man with a thin, cold face._

_“Congratulations on making it this far,” the man said. “If you want to make it any farther, then do exactly as I say.”_

“Light, what the hell,” Aoi whispered. “What’s—Light, hey—”

He froze at the sound of shifting metal. Hongou pointed the gun directly at his head.

“Ah, yes. Bracelet [4],” he muttered. “You’re the only one with no idea what’s going on in Building Q right now, aren’t you? You complete and utter _failure_.”

Akane backed away from Aoi on her hands and knees. Without making any sudden movements, he pressed against Light, urging him away from the line of fire.

“You’ve _ruined_ my plans, you know,” Hongou growled. “I wanted to send only the most elite receivers through the final trial behind the second door [9]. But now I have to send _you_.”

Light did not budge.

“And to think, you had _such_ promising results in my tests.” Hongou scoffed and rolled his eyes. “What a disappointment.”

Fear was the only thing keeping Aoi’s mouth shut tight. As soon as Hongou let the gun drop, he exploded.

“Because _you_ fucked it up, shithead!”

Hongou staggered back. His eyebrows quivered.

Aoi wanted to feel the skin of that man’s neck under his fingers when he clenched his hands into fists. He wanted to charge forward and claw out his eyes and kick him in the stomach and take his gun and shoot every bullet it had left into his head.

“I can’t receive _shit_ ,” he screamed, “’cause you didn’t even fucking put my sister in Building Q!”

“Impossible,” Hongou uttered. “That… that can’t be.”

“I-it’s true!”

Nona rose onto shaking legs. With a push, she coaxed Claire away from her as she stared into Hongou’s eyes with as much determination as she could muster.

“The girl with bracelet [4] in Building Q,” she stammered. “She’s—she’s _American_. She’s white. Aoi’s Japanese. They’re not siblings!”

“And _him_!” Aoi shouted, giving Light one last shove towards relative safety. “You mixed up him and Claire’s sisters, too!”

“You just put Clover and Claire together ’cause they both have red hair!” Nobu won back his confident smile bit by bit. “They don’t even look alike, they’re…!”

Hongou gave a violent twitch. His forehead shone with sweat.

“You messed everything up yourself, you fucking dumbass!” Aoi yelled.

“ _Shut up!_ ”

Aoi saw the sweeping motion of the gun rising in Hongou’s arm, rising towards him, and Hongou was bracing his other hand against it so that he could handle the recoil when he started firing, and he was going to start firing, and Aoi thought about what his body would look like with lots of red holes in it, little seeping pockets full of lead.

As a deafening burst of gunfire filled the air, Aoi had the air punched out of him when Light knocked into his chest. They crashed against the floor together. Light crouched over him, the only barrier between him and the man with the machine gun.

“ _Fuck_ , Light, _run_!” Aoi shrieked, shoving against the arms pinning him to the ground.

Light did not move. He turned his head over his shoulder to face Hongou, wearing a grimace like a dare.

“ _You’re lying!_ ” Hongou howled. “Don’t _lie_ to me, you little _shits_!”

Aoi could not see Hongou’s face beyond Light’s shoulders, and all the better. It was a sickening sight in a shade of deep red, almost purple, twisted with something closer to anguish than rage.

“ _Get out of here!_ ” he screamed. “Go through door [9] before I _kill_ you _all_!”

He fired his gun into the air. The children looked like vermin as they fled, like nothing more than jittery little lab rats running on instinct from a scientist’s hand in their cage.

Nobu yanked Ren to her feet. Aoi grabbed Light’s hand, told him to follow, and took off. Other than that, it was every child for themself as they scrambled back down the hall that rang with the sounds of their pounding footsteps, the distant echo of gunshots, and the high-pitched pants of little kids trying not to cry.

Nobu got to the Saturn elevators first. “In, in, in!” he yelled, waving his arm like a windmill once he got the doors open.

As soon as they were all inside, they all fell apart. The tears poured out, and the sobs. In the center of the elevator, Yuuki fell to her knees.

“I’m sorry,” she sputtered. “I’m sorry. It’s all my fault. I’m sorry. I’m _sorry_.”

“It’s okay,” Ren rasped between coughs. “We’re all okay.”

“Everybody’s here?!” Aoi called out, whipping his head around to count heads in the sea of crying kids. “Nobody’s hurt?! Where’s Akane?!”

“Akane’s here,” Nona said in a high voice. “Claire’s here, too. We’re okay.”

Yuuki’s head shot up. “Hideyoshi,” she gasped.

“I’m—I’m—I’m here,” he squeaked. His glasses were pushed up to his forehead so he could mop up his eyes and cheeks with his sweater.

“We n-n-need to h-hurry.”

When the elevator stopped on E-Deck, Light was still visibly trembling. His words were heavy with his shuddering breaths.

“Th-the others a-are g—going through th-the doors alr-ready,” he mumbled. “W-we n-need to…”

“Dude, are you okay?” Aoi uttered. “You’re shaking like crazy.”

_She had always been fearless to a fault._

_“But they’re not here yet!” Clover said. “They’re not—we have to wait for them to—”_

_Nijisaki_ _moved his finger from the guard to the trigger and took aim. “Put your hand on the RED,” he ordered. “Now.”_

“J-just _do_ it, Clover,” Light whispered. “Please. P-please. Please, g-go.”

He did not even notice Aoi dragging him out of the elevator and down the hall to the chapel.

“Nona, what’re the doors?” Nobu panted as they ran. “I didn’t see—I couldn’t tell who—”

“You’re in the bigger door,” Nona called. “You, Ren, Yuuki, and Hideyoshi are the bigger door. Everyone else goes to the small one.”

“Wait, they picked already?!” Aoi cried. “What about—?!”

“That’s what Hongou was writing, Aoi.” Light clamped his jaw shut to keep it from chattering. “How to split us up for these doors. We never had a choice.”

They spilled into the chapel. Nobu herded his team towards the larger door.

“Wait.” Aoi’s weak voice barely cut through the sound of the RED registering Nobu’s bracelet, then Hideyoshi’s. “What about—Akane, is this…?”

He found her eyes on him, wide with horror, rimmed with tears.

“Akane, it’s okay, which door do you hafta go through?” he asked. “Screw what that motherfucker says, alright? If we gotta, you and me can switch out with—”

He reached out for her hand. With a soft, silent gasp, she staggered back from him, as if afraid of his touch. In the middle of the chapel, he froze with his hand outstretched.

“What?” he whispered.

“Akane, c’mon, what door do you wanna go through?” Nona asked, watching the entrance to the chapel with anxious eyes.

Akane pointed at the smaller door [9].

“Then what’s the problem?!” Nona demanded, scanning her bracelet.

Akane swung her arm around to point at Aoi, and slowly shook her head.

It was all so impossible that Aoi could not believe it until she was nodding after Nona asked, “You don’t want Aoi to go with us?”

The tears in her terrified eyes were growing thicker. “He’s going to kill me,” she whimpered.

It took a long time for the words to sink in, but when they did, they were cold in the pit of his stomach, and so heavy that he could not stand straight. His body swayed and the room went blurry.

But above all else, he loved his sister, and he would do anything to keep her safe, so he said, “Okay. S-swap… swap me out with…”

He tried to do the math. He was bracelet [4], so he needed two bracelets that added up to [4]—or, more likely, two bracelets that added up to [13]. [6] and [7] would work—Nobu and Yuuki would go with Akane, and he would go on the other team—but that made six kids trying to go through one door, and that was impossible.

He did not realize he was mumbling pieces of his arithmetic out loud until Light slammed a hand down on his shoulder and said, “ _Enough_. We don’t have time for this.”

Akane cowered backwards with a high, trembling gasp.

“The others in Building Q have already gone through. Switching our groups will jeopardize our ability to transmit and receive with the largest number of people,” he said. “No one likes it, but we have to do as Gentarou Hongou says.”

“But—but Akane—”

“We don’t have a _choice_ , Aoi,” Light stated, and his voice was louder now than they had ever heard it before. “For God’s sake, the man has a machine gun. Just _go_.”

He shoved Aoi forward. Aoi stumbled and tangled his feet and when he looked up, he was staring straight into Akane’s eyes, and tears were running down her cheeks. He wanted to hold her, to tell her everything was alright, to protect her from her fears, but she could not stand to be near him.

Because in her head, in a distant future, her brother acted like a stranger, said mean things, and now he was holding her at gunpoint. He had already fired one bullet. She was so terrified of the look in his eyes, the look of a young man willing to do anything, to hurt anyone in order to get what he wanted.

“Good luck!” Nobu called as the larger door [9] opened for his crew. “We’ll—we’ll see you soon! Promise, okay?!”

“Promise!” Nona shouted back. “Be careful!”

Aoi heard a phantom echo of his sister’s voice in his head telling him that a girl was going to die on this ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy ace's day of 999 week everyone :)


	14. Door [9] ?

Hi!

It’s so nice to finally be able to talk to you after all this time.

My name’s Claire.

I’m eight years old, but when I was five, Daddy told me to tell everyone I was six, so I hafta tell people I’m nine now. I’m always one year older onstage.

“You like performing, right?” he asked. “Aren’t the nighttime shows more exciting? If you want to do the nighttime shows, then you have to tell everyone you’re six years old, alright?”

Daddy told me he loved the way I smiled when I said it, like I knew how cute I was.

Holly’s still fifteen till December, but she’s been saying she’s sixteen since the beginning of the year. She does lots more shows than me now, almost every day. When she takes off her pretty makeup after the show and the dark circles under her eyes come out, she gives me a hug and a kiss and says, “I always love doing shows with you best, Claire.”

We’re from Australia. That’s what we’re supposed to say when we’re overseas, but Daddy never told me what to say when I’m _in_ the seas, so I guess I’ll say I’m from Victoria, too, just to be safe. I’ve been to America lots, and England a few times, but this was my first time to Japan, and it was the first time I could ever remember flying someplace without my pretty dresses and skirts. Our acting coach didn’t come, or our agent. Holly asked if it was a vacation. Mum said no. Daddy said yes.

It was a little bit of both. We went sightseeing and climbed a mountain (Holly said it was a volcano, but we wouldn’t be allowed to climb a volcano because it could erupt and the lava would melt everybody to goo, so I think it’s a mountain). But the most important reason we were here was because there were some people Mummy and Daddy wanted us to meet.

“You’ll do your routine for them, alright?” Mum said.

Terror gripped me from the inside out. I stole a glance at my sister, but she looked calm. Barely awake, almost, to be honest.

“You told me we weren’t gonna perform!” I cried. “I didn’t pack my dresses!”

Mummy and Daddy laughed and told me it wasn’t like that. It was going to be like when we did our routine at Daddy’s fancy parties with all his friends, or whoever they are. No stage, no bright lights, just nice clothes, only a little bit of makeup for Holly to hide her zits and make her eyes look big and dark, and some rouge for me if Mum said I looked pale.

Holly said it was silly that I got more stage fright doing our routine at home for Daddy’s strange friends than when we had a whole theater filled up. I feel the ripples of her fear when that deep, overwhelming sound of hundreds of people laughing bubble up in a resonant hall, and I always give her a smile when I feel it, and she smiles back. If we’re close enough, we hold hands.

I like it because the lights are so bright that I can’t see anybody out in the audience. I go into my own little world on the stage, my world with Holly.

Daddy’s friends are always trying to make jokes with us in the middle of a bit and it throws me off the script. I have blocking and we both have lines when Holly’s getting a member of the audience to write down the secret message, and they always, always, always try to make conversation with me instead, and they laugh too loud at jokes I don’t understand because it’s so hard to listen when I’m trying to concentrate on the show.

Holly always helps. She’ll joke back with them for a little while, and then she’ll give me a prompt that goes right with one of my next lines, and we’ll jump right back into it. Since she didn’t have a chance to say “No peeking!” while she was getting the message written down, she asked, “Claire, you weren’t peeking, right?”

This used to be my favorite line. Everyone always laughed so hard, even Mum, because I would say it louder and louder every night and have her in stitches again.

“I don’t even know how to _read_ yet!”

Daddy said we couldn’t tell that joke anymore once I got too old, even though I still didn’t really know how to read.

(By the time we were in the doctor’s office in Japan I knew how to read just fine. I noticed the misspellings printed on the form. I watched Daddy write _2009_ instead of _2010_ for my birthday.)

I could always see the secret message through Holly’s eyes, but the cursive just looked like scribbles. Holly had to think it out loud so I could recite it. Daddy’s friends always wrote really weird stuff they wanted to hear me say, and it made them all laugh in a way I only knew was mean because Holly felt so angry afterwards. I’d look at her and she’d have a bright, shimmering smile, but she was like frozen steel on the inside, so cold that your fingers would stick if you touched her.

I never got angry until I heard them talk to Daddy after we did our curtsies and scurried off to the edge of the room, like running backstage after the show. They’d shake Daddy’s hand and clap him on the back and say, “I can’t for the life of me figure out how they do that little gimmick of theirs. I know it’s just a big trick, but they’re so cute, you gotta love ’em anyway.”

It wasn’t a trick. Daddy told them this with a little wink, like a salesman keeping a trade secret, but we all knew it really wasn’t a trick.

It all started because Holly always had songs stuck in her head. When Holly gets a song stuck in her head, _everyone_ gets that song stuck in their head. She rubs it into the air like a pattern, a groove she digs deeper into wax each time she thinks through the loop, and the needles of our mind run through and pick it up, even if we’ve never heard the song before, even if it’s just one she’s making up just now. I’ve heard it ever since I was little. It used to be our little game, where she’d think of a song, pressing her fingers to her temples as she stared at me with a mischievous grin, and I’d sing it back to her as soon as I got the melody in my ear.

As soon as we got onstage, she’d start pushing out a song. Before calling places, Mum would always ask us if Holly remembered to tell me the song, and Holly would always say yes, and wink at me, because she knew it was more fun for me to learn it as the show went on. Halfway through the set, when I felt it resonating through the crowd, I’d start singing. They bring up the lights in the house just for me so I can see everyone’s faces as they go from pleasant smiles to dropped jaws. That’s the moment, right there, when they finally believe in us.

Maybe they just bring up the lights in the house because we’re supposed to bring up someone from the audience who Holly couldn’t reach with the broadcast. It’s always because they’re somebody who can rub patterns of their own, not as strong, not as wide, but just enough to overwrite Holly’s grooves for themselves. You need a fine needle if you want to be able to play their record. And that’s where I come in.

A fat, kind of old Japanese man with a jolly laugh shook Daddy’s hand when we came into the back room. I didn’t realize it when he was saying his name, and then all those strange syllables were lost to the dusty air. His English had such a thick accent that Holly kept running everything he said through a little mental filter for me, putting the words in the right places when he said them out of order and adding the Australian musicality back into it.

When he greeted us, it was with a big smile. He held up his open hands beside his head, thumbs by his ears.

“You call me… Mr. Moose!”

I giggled as he wiggled his antler-fingers. But when he squatted down to my level, I saw the truth in his eyes. I saw cold, and I saw hunger.

I see a lot of things.

“I know ‘Claire the Clairvoyant’ is repetitive, but ‘Claire Voyant’ sounds like you had a stroke in the middle of trying to say ‘clairvoyant’.” Holly wasn’t supposed to be lying down on the floor of the RV, but it had been a long drive back from Sydney, so Mum didn’t say anything to her. “There’s a syllabic stress match with Holly Hypnosis and Claire the Clairvoyant. I think they go together.”

Daddy didn’t like the word _clairvoyant_ at all. “She’s not some two-bit psychic in a hole-in-the-wall shop playing make-believe with a crystal ball,” he said.

He says that a lot. But never to his friends, or whoever those fancy men are that come to the big parties he hosts at our house. He just plays along with whatever they think, like he’s trying to impress them by agreeing with everything they say.

I see more than I even know how to put into words sometimes.

He felt a little timid, even if he was trying not to show it, when he said it to Mr. Moose. His eyes flicked to the back of the room, where a row of three other men stood silent. Mr. Moose’s eyes were filled with a lazy, insatiable hunger—the endless lust for money, even after collecting so much it becomes functionally infinite.

The men behind him were ravenous.

The man pressing electrodes to my head wanted fame, maybe fortune. He quivered with excitement at the prospect of proving half a century of critics wrong when he recorded indisputable, scientific proof of a phenomenon that could change our entire understanding of human history, of all life, of the way the entire universe might have unfolded.

While he wanted to share his knowledge with the world, his thin, pale colleague in the back of the room knew that knowledge was more powerful when it was scarce. He wanted to strengthen his own hand, as well as those of his trusted partners.

I couldn’t figure out what the big man with the Cheshire Cat grin wanted. It was something too personal.

“Thank you very much for let us use your beautiful daughters,” Mr. Moose slowly told our parents with a little bow of his head. He handed them a little slip of paper, and then Daddy looked hungry like him.

As soon as he turned around, he dove back into his native tongue. The sounds left the four men’s mouths so fast I thought they couldn’t be real words. Mr. Moose told me they were going to turn a dial on the machine that would make my brain think I was scared. I shook my head and said I didn’t need it, I was already scared. He chuckled and nodded to the little man with the big glasses.

When I get scared, I feel really small. The world gets so big around me, and it goes all kinds of ways, and it’s all so busy and noisy and everyone has thoughts and feelings swirling around in a big mess, and everything was shaking, shaking, shaking.

No, everything was going to shake, it hadn’t happened yet. It was so hard to keep track of what’s now and what already happened and what’s going to happen next.

“Now,” said Mr. Moose. “What is… your name?”

“My name’s Claire,” I mumbled.

The tall, thin man’s English was even worse than Mr. Moose’s. I couldn’t understand what he was asking Holly.

“How old is Claire?” asked Mr. Moose.

“I’m eight years old,” I said in a shaky voice, “but when I was five, Daddy told me to tell everyone I was six, so I hafta tell people I’m nine now.”

The little man with the glasses and the white coat said something in Japanese with a nod as he looked up from his computer screen.

 “Where does Claire live?”

“We’re from Australia. That’s what we’re supposed to say when we’re overseas.”

The big man with the wild hair was drawing a divider through the center of the room, slicing it in two, coming straight towards us, between me and Holly.

“What is… my name?” Mr. Moose asked with a smile, holding his hands to his ears and wiggling his antler-fingers.

_Kagechika Musashidou._

“Kagechika Musashidou.”

Musashidou’s eyes went wide. He dropped his hands.

The thin man stopped in the middle of what might have been a sentence he was saying to Holly, and snapped his head to me. He threw an arm in the way of the big man rolling out the divider. “What is _my_ name?” he demanded.

_Nagisa Nijisaki._

I spat out the syllables as fast as I could, before I lost the sound of them in my head. Now he and the big man over his shoulder had matching Cheshire Cat grins. Nijisaki pointed at—

“Gentarou Hongou.”

—and then at—

“Teriyaki Kubota.”

They all had a laugh at that, and then I heard it, _Teruaki, Teruaki, Teruaki, Teruaki_ , on an endless loop in my head, and I started yelling it to make it stop, I _heard_ , okay, I _know_ , Mum, Dad, Holly, Nagisa, Kagechika, Teruaki, Gentarou, I hear all of you, I hear everything, I hear, I hear, I hear, I hear—

_—a surge of worry—_

_—a pang of guilt—_

_—a flood of rage—_

_—a glimpse of power—_

_—a sigh of relief—_

_—a rush of vindication—_

_—a sense of wonder._

“Turn it off,” I sobbed.

“No, no,” said Mr. Moose. “A little more!”

“Earthquake,” I cried as soon as I could think of the word. “Blackout.”

“Earthquake?” he repeated.

No sooner had he turned around and started muttering something in Japanese than the world began to rock under our feet. I had been shaking in this earthquake already for the past three minutes. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw—

_—people stepping away from windows, standing under arches and doorways, securing what they could on their way to safety as the building tilted back and forth and the lights flickered._

The divider was folding and unfolding like an accordion, unheeded by the men clapping each other’s backs and grinning like they had won a race by betting on a horse they didn’t own.

_Nijisaki wanted to alter the course of the investigation following the discovery of this powerful esper: a universal receiver of past, present, and future. Hongou bubbled and frothed as he refused, bullying Kubota into siding with him. No matter what discoveries they had made today, they could not abandon their current research when they were coming upon the ultimate experiment. He had always had a way with words that painted himself and his ideals as absolutes. His bold arguments swayed Musashidou from Nijisaki’s side to his own, and that was the end of the discussion. They still had leftover funds in the estimated budget. They could just buy out the Australian girls again after the conclusion of the Nonary Project if need be._

Mummy and Daddy heard me crying. I felt it. But they still brought us back to the clinic every day, and Mr. Moose kept handing them those little slips of paper. Daddy argued the first day he brought us back, but then Mr. Moose took out a pen and wrote something more on it, and Daddy got quiet again. The first day was the worst, when they did that thing to trick my brain into being afraid, but I still cried at least once every session.

I remember Daddy said we had one more session left to go, tomorrow morning, but I don’t remember ever going there. When I woke up, I was on the big ship. They changed all the answers, but over the course of that week in Japan, I saw almost every puzzle that I was seeing again tonight.

 

* * *

 

Beyond the double doors in the chapel lay a dark hall leading to a staircase. The hall below that ended with a pair of metal doors, lined with black and yellow stripes. A sign in what looked like English sat above the doors, but no one could read it. Nothing happened when Nobu pulled the red lever beside the door. Hideyoshi found a lone elevator around the corner in the hallway, but nothing happened when he pushed the call button.

There was nothing else.

“Maybe—maybe we’re supposed to receive the answer from our siblings,” Hideyoshi said. “M-maybe…”

“I don’t think so,” Ren said.

While the other kids scoured the hall for clues, Ren sank against the wall and just tried to stay conscious. She had started feeling better after about five or ten minutes, but Nobu told her to sit back down when she tried to stand and help look around. Hideyoshi told Yuuki to stay with her and make sure she was okay, even if what he really wanted was for someone to stay with Yuuki until she stopped crying. “I’m sorry,” she kept whimpering as Ren leaned limp against her shaking shoulder. “This is all my fault.”

“He said… he said he was picking the elite receivers,” Ren said, her voice still breathy. “That’s Light, Nona, Claire… Akane, too, right? You said Akane was good at this stuff. It’s none of us.”

“Ren, you can talk both ways with your sister,” Yuuki said. Her voice was still strained, but the tears had dried up. “You’re _really_ good at this.”

“M’not as good as _them_.” She shrugged. “I think it’s a test for them. They’re doing one last experiment and the rest of us just have to wait for them to finish.”

So, one by one, they all ended up sitting next to Ren against the wall, twiddling their thumbs and filling the dead air with idle chatter.

“Aoi’s… sister,” Yuuki murmured with a frown.

Nobu gave a little shiver and glanced into the corners of the ceiling.  “She’s not in Building Q,” he said quietly.

“It’s Akane, isn’t it?” Ren whispered.

She still felt nervous looking Nobu in the eye, even when it was just a glance. She had never really apologized; Nobu had just forgiven her without an explanation.

“This whole time—that’s why she’s been fighting which door she wants to go into,” she mumbled. “Aoi and Akane went through every single door together. And even when we split up to look for the doors that one time, they went together.”

“They’re… siblings?” Yuuki breathed.

“That—that’s not possible,” Hideyoshi protested. “They aren’t—they can’t be—Akane is—”

“They don’t look anything alike,” Yuuki said with a frown and a nod.

“Akane got all the puzzles!” Hideyoshi cried, pounding his little fists against the floor. “If—if—if she’s Aoi’s sister—if she’s supposed to be—if he’s supposed to—if they’re both here, how can—how can she see—?!”

Nobu nodded his head with vigor when he finally had another who understood the paradox. “I know!” he shouted. “I don’t know what’s going on, but—you saw her too, right?! She knows all the puzzles like the back of her hand!”

The impossibility tied knots into the thread of the story Ren finally thought she had pieced together.

“If… if she and Aoi are siblings,” Yuuki said, “if they can’t get anything from that Building Q because they’re both here, and… and didn’t they go with Light last time? And Light didn’t go with Claire, so…”

“How the _hell_ did they get through door [1]?” Ren wondered, holding her head in her hands.

“They were the first ones to finish!” Yuuki yelled in exasperation, throwing her arms out in front of her. “Aoi and Light were there when we came back up the elevator, that’s how we got Ren to the hospital room, and then, Nobu, you guys showed up _after_ that! They were _first_!”

“How the…” Ren shook her head. “How the _fuck_ did they…?”

Nobu nodded again, more slowly, with a worried furrow in his brow. “That’s what I’m saying,” he said. “I know Akane was supposed to be in Building Q. There was some other girl who was supposed to be here instead, Violet, remember? That man, in the… in the beginning, he… said…”

All at once, their thoughts turned to that man. They could hear the water sloshing around in D-Deck, two floors above them, as the ship settled its weight deeper into the ocean.

“I… I recognized that guy,” whispered Yuuki. “I met him before.”

Ren’s eyes went wide. “You, too?”

“Wait, wait, where did you meet him?” Nobu asked, leaning forward onto his hands.

“I… it was a doctor visit,” Ren said. “I broke my finger and… it was at this children’s clinic in—”

“Yeah, yeah, the children’s clinic!” Nobu exclaimed. “I went there ’cuz I broke my leg, and I saw that guy, too! I thought it was just a coincidence, but if _you_ guys saw him, too…”

“I—I went to a clinic, too,” Hideyoshi piped up. “I—I—I dunno if it was—I’m not sure, but—but I think—maybe—if you guys saw him, too, then—then maybe…”

“This was all because we went to that hospital?” Yuuki uttered. “Was it that—that bogus experiment he made us do? Did you guys—with the blindfold thing, and then…”

“Never told me it was prescreening for a fucked-up death game,” Ren muttered.

“Hey, don’t—c’mon, it’s gonna be okay, right?” The bandages on Nobu’s cheek made his smile lopsided. “We’re really close to the end. We’re gonna get out of here soon, and… and I’m really glad I got to meet you guys.”

Ren snorted and turned her head to the side. “No, you’re not,” she said, pointing to her cheek and nodding at his.

“Well, we didn’t really get to meet yet, then, right?”

Nobu extended his good hand across Hideyoshi’s and Yuuki’s stomachs to reach her.

“I’m Nobu,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

Ren gently took Nobu’s hand with a quivering smile. “Ren,” she said in return. “S-sorry about… I’m not always like that, promise.”

“Yeah, Ren’s nice,” Yuuki said.

Ren went bright red and snapped her hand back to her side. “ _That’s_ going a little far,” she muttered.

“You’re nicer than _me_ , anyway,” Yuuki grumbled. “Nobody’s glad they met me.”

“I’m glad I met you!” Hideyoshi protested, tugging the fold of her rolled-up sleeves.

Ren gave her a light nudge. “I’m glad I met you,” she said.

Yuuki slid her feet closer to her, bringing her knees up to her face. “See?” she said weakly. “You guys are nice.”

“I haven’t really met you, either, Hideyoshi,” Nobu said, holding out his hand again. “This is the first time we went through a door together, yeah?”

“Y-yeah,” Hideyoshi said. “I… I think I’ve gone through a door with—with everybody except—except Claire, now.”

“Aw, you didn’t get to go with her? Claire’s nice. Claire’s lots of fun.”

Yuuki looked up with a frown. “She _is_?”

“Yeah, she’s cute,” Ren said with a little grin, tucking her hair behind her ear. She still felt the bumps of Claire’s little braid.

“You can tell she just wants to be friends, even though she can’t speak Japanese,” Nobu said. “She just wants to help.”

“I haven’t gone through a door with…” Yuuki started counting on her fingers. “Light, Aoi, Akane… yeah, that’s it. Those three.”

“I went with Light once, but I didn’t go with Aoi and Akane, either,” Ren said. “What’s… Akane like?”

Nobu and Hideyoshi gave each other a glance, then stared at the ground with troubled frowns.

“She’s… quiet,” Nobu mumbled. “I don’t really know.”

Hideyoshi nodded.

“But Aoi’s nice,” Nobu went on. “He acts kinda scary, but he’s… He’s the one that wrapped up my wrist and everything.”

“Yeah, he helped Ren when—like I said, to get to the hospital room after…” Yuuki thumbed over her shoulder at Ren. “I know what you mean. He’s, like, the mom friend, right?”

Nobu burst into a roar of laughter. “He’s the _mom_ friend,” he repeated through giggles.

“So then what’s Light?” Ren joked.

“Oh, gosh, yeah, he’s kinda mom friend material, too,” Nobu snickered.

“No, I mean, since he and Aoi are…” Ren held a hand to her face and shook her head. “Ugh, never mind.”

“Ren, are—are you—you’re feeling okay now, right?” Hideyoshi dug his fingers under his shoelaces to drag his feet closer. “Are you—are you still—?”

She let her head fall between her knees. “I’m better, I think,” she sighed. “Sitting down’s nice.”

“I think that makes Yuuki a dad friend?” Nobu was teasing.

“Gross, no, I’m not a boy!” Yuuki protested.

“Oh, worm?”

“Well, yeah, Light and Aoi aren’t—wait, Ren, what?”

Ren had lifted her head with a drowsy look in her lidded eyes as she said it, but when Nobu heard her, she shoved her head back down. “Nothing.”

“You sure you’re okay?” Nobu asked warily.

“Yeah. Just… tired. Sorry.”

She turned her head away. When she lifted her hands from her sides to fold across her chest, her left brushed against another hand hovering just above it. She left her hand hanging in mid-air as her thoughts caught on a snag.

“You don’t have to say sorry.” Yuuki set her hand back down on the ground beside her, curling her fingers and squeezing. “It’s not your fault. Just… tell us if you’re not feeling okay, stupid.”

She folded her hands in her lap when that last “stupid” fell out of her mouth like a counterweight to her kindness. It was so hard to be nice, and it was so much harder to be nice to someone when that moment might expose her own tender heart to the open air.

Ren lowered her hand back down. She flexed her fingers, but felt nothing near her on the floor. Her hand relaxed again.

Yuuki set her right hand by her side, close enough that Ren might find it if she stretched out her fingers again.

“Hey… what did you guys wanna be when you grew up?”

Yuuki jolted up, leaned over Hideyoshi, and smacked Nobu’s shoulder. “Don’t say _did_. Oh my God.”

Ren gave a weak laugh. “Yeah, man, we’re still gonna grow up. C’mon.”

“No! I mean…” Nobu rubbed his shoulder where Yuuki had struck him. “I mean, I just… before today, I always…”

He gave a heavy sigh. His eyes wandered up and down the empty hallway.

“I kinda wanted to be a… a cop.”

“Wait, _really_?” Yuuki blurted. Her eyes bored into his, looking for a joke, but there was none to find.

“Y-yeah, like, a detective, or a private eye, or something,” he mumbled. “I mean, it’s not… I can’t…”

“No, that’s—I just thought…” She shifted back against the wall and shrugged. “I thought you’d wanna be a pianist or something. You were… you’re pretty good.”

Now it was Nobu’s turn to shrug. “I’m not good enough to be a real pianist. I’d hafta practice way more. It’s just for fun,” he said. “But I guess… I guess I’m not good enough to be a cop, either. I always wanted to go out and find clues and solve mysteries and save people and stuff. But then we all ended up here, and… and I’m _terrible_ at it, you know? I solved maybe _one_ puzzle this entire time, and that was just because I got it from my brother, I think. I was no good at finding clues, or figuring out how they go together, or…”

“Yeah, Hideyoshi, you wanna be a detective?” Yuuki muttered. “You solved almost everything for us last round. Everything that wasn’t psychic, you solved it.”

Hideyoshi toyed with his shoelaces. “But I… I don’t know if I wanna be a cop,” he said.

“Ugh, that’s how it _always_ is with you guys,” Yuuki groaned. “You’re just good at everything, you’re better at everything than everyone else, and you don’t even care, you don’t even _like_ it, you’re just _good_ at it.”

“But—but I think that makes the whole difference,” Hideyoshi said, looking up. “I don’t think it matters as much if you’re—if you’re _good_ at something. Not—not as much as it matters how—how much you want to do it. If—if you—if you want to do it, you’ll try and try and try until—until you figure it out, and—and you’ll get better because you _want_ to get better. I think—I think that’s what matters.”

He shrugged at Nobu and turned back to his shoelaces.

“I wanted to be a writer,” Yuuki murmured.

Ren rested her cheek on her knee to gaze up at Yuuki with sleepy eyes. “What kind of writing?”

“I dunno, it was just… I stopped wanting to be a writer when I realized I wasn’t any good at it anymore,” she said. “But maybe all of this is just a self-fulfilling prophecy, y’know? I start wondering if I’m not good at something, and I stop trying at it, so I don’t get any better, and then I point at that like it’s proof I’m no good. I think I’m stuck in a loop like that.”

“Writing’s something you can do by yourself where nobody’s watching,” Ren pointed out. “No harm trying.”

Yuuki’s smile got shier after she stole a glance at Ren. Both turned their faces away from each other at the same time, and picked up their hands at the same time, and tried to move them in opposite directions, only for their knuckles to knock into each other. They both withdrew their hands with an automatic, mumbled apology, then buried their faces in their knees.

“So, Hideyoshi, what _do_ you wanna be when you grow up?” Nobu asked.

“I dunno.” He had moved on to playing with his hanging suspenders now. “Maybe a doctor, or something like that.”

“ _Maybe_ a doctor,” Yuuki muttered. “‘Oh, I don’t know, I’m still thinking about it, but _maybe_ I’ll spend years and years in really tough schools to be a doctor, because I’m so smart I could do anything I want to.’”

“I don’t know what I want to do, though,” Hideyoshi said quietly. “That’s the whole problem.”

“Hideyoshi, you’re, what, ten?” Ren said. “None of us even have this stuff figured out yet. We’re just… thinking.”

“Ren, what do _you_ want to be?” Yuuki asked.

Ren leaned her head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. “What do I wanna be?” she sighed. “What did I always wanna be when I grew up, ever since I was a kid?”

She smirked. She found it funny. It was easier to say if it felt like a joke.

“A girl.”

Nobu and Hideyoshi both started snickering. It was the weight of a bulletproof vest off of her shoulders, only to feel the sting of bullets in her exposed flesh. She liked feeling lighter, at least.

“Wait, really?” Yuuki asked. “Guys, don’t laugh. Ren, for real?”

Ren folded her arms across her body. “I mean, kinda, yeah,” she said. “It’s not…”

“That’s, like, a real thing. You can do that.”

Her muscles went rigid. She curled away from Yuuki. “No, I know,” she mumbled, “I know it’s a thing, but it’s not…”

“Do you go on Tumblr? There’s all these people on Tumblr who—it’s called _transgender_ , it’s when you—”

“I know what it is,” Ren snapped. “I have a Tumblr.”

“R-really? Can I follow you? What’s your URL, is it something easy to remember? Mine’s not, it’s got lots of numbers, but I’ll follow you first and then you can follow me back.”

It was such a lovely thought, going home to their normal lives and their computers, with a little thread to connect them all, that Ren overcame her embarrassment.

“It’s, um, dabbing queen. With a dash. Dabbing dash queen.”

“D… dabbing?” Yuuki repeated.

“Yeah, y’know, like…”

With expert speed, Ren dabbed. Her hands were back at her sides in an instant; Yuuki blinked and missed most of it. Yuuki blinked again when it was over, because Ren’s hand had landed squarely on top of hers. Only after exhaling out the heat of embarrassment did Ren notice. By the time she tried to snatch her hand back, Yuuki had already latched onto her fingers.

“You’re a dork,” she said, with an awed smile.

“This is stupid,” Hideyoshi muttered.

He hugged his knees and tucked his head to the side when all faces turned to him.

“What… what even happens if we—when—when we get out?” he asked. “Can we even—we’re on a boat, right? So—so—so we get out of the boat before it sinks, and—and then what? We’re just… in the ocean. Then what?”

“Lifeboats?” Nobu suggested. “Then… I dunno, maybe Nona can call for help. Like, she calls Ennea, and Ennea gets help. Building Q is on land, right? So…”

“Who _cares_ if it’s on land?” Hideyoshi said with a strained voice. “What’s—what’s the difference, a-anyway? Does it—does it even matter if we get out?! We’re not—we’re not gonna get to just—just magically go back home and—and—and play on Tumblr, or—or whatever!”

“H-hey, Hideyoshi,” Ren said softly, leaning forward with a furrow in her brow.

“That—that—that _man_ , he—he doesn’t _care_ if we die.” Hideyoshi’s glasses shifted up as he swept a sleeve under his eyes and sniffed. “He put—he put bombs inside us, he—he tried to—he’s killed—the gun—and—what if he just—what if he—what if we… and in the end, he just…”

Yuuki laid an arm across his shivering shoulders and pulled him closer to her side. “You’re just scaring yourself, Hideyoshi,” she sighed. “It’s gonna be fine. It’s gotta be.”

Hideyoshi sniffed again, clutching the edge of her sweater vest. “See,” he mumbled, “you _are_ nice, Yuuki.”

Ren squeezed her hand and gave her a smile when she blushed.

 


	15. Door [9]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> something of a birthday present for my good good friend kit!!!! expect some choice young aoilight content (i still refuse to tag it why??? they're friends. they're just friends everybody. friends who hold hands a lot and have a lot of unresolved romantic tension and are gay and/or bi and)
> 
> emeto warning??? I think?? I forget if I've been warning when people think they're gonna puke but they don't. Nobody Throws Up Okay

I was supposed to be on the boat.

I thought I _was_ on the boat for a little while, in the beginning. They made it look so real when the portholes burst and the water came rushing inside our cabins on D-Deck. Then I came up the stairs.

I knew before Mr. Nijisaki said Akane’s name instead of mine that I was supposed to be on the boat. I knew before Mr. Nijisaki told us we were in Building Q that I was supposed to be on the boat, and that I wasn’t actually there. I knew it all as soon as I got to C-Deck and my brother turned around to meet my eyes.

Papa kept saying we were born for this day. Papa tries not to talk about it, but we think we were never really “born” at all. He isn’t our real father, we’re pretty sure, and we don’t know our real father, or our real mother. We think we’re some kind of experiments. That’s what Reed said, anyway. Reed knows what people are thinking around us.

It was a long time ago when they first told us about receivers and transmitters. They called Reed a receiver, and they said that meant I was a transmitter. Close siblings like us often form polarized pairs that way, like two ions in a compound, like anodes and cathodes, like mirror images making something more powerful than symmetry.

But the news came in from the Cradle headquarters in Japan that they had found pairs where the lines between receiver and transmitter were blurred, where the thoughts traveled into and out of the field for two of a kind. That’s when they started evaluating Reed as a transmitter and me as a receiver, and rushing to test even more children, even other American children, ones who hadn’t been studying Japanese for years like us, just to see what they could find that fit the classical model of resonance. Today was going to be a test of our skills running in parallel with Cradle’s Nonary Project: the proof that we both could read and write in the morphogenetic field.

Papa said we were born for this day, and then they went and messed it up.

I don’t think I’m a receiver _or_ a transmitter. I don’t think we’re binary stars, pulling equally on each other to stick together. I’ve always felt more like Reed is a planet, and I’m just a satellite.

Maybe we’re born for lots of reasons. Maybe now that this stupid day is finally ending, we get to find our own reasons now.

 

* * *

 

“We should split up and search the area for other doors,” Light said, and he grasped Aoi’s arm before anyone could have any other ideas about how exactly they would split up.

As Nona took Akane’s and Claire’s hands and hurried them down the hall, Akane stole one last terrified glance at the place where Aoi’s body was, but not his mind, certainly not his mind. Aoi himself—if he was himself, if he existed, if the thing known as Aoi Kurashiki had ever been anything more than a sack of bones and too little flesh—was floating in space, trembling, being ground to pieces and shoved together again, and someone was going to die on this ship, and he wanted it to be him, right now.

“I can hear your breathing, Aoi,” Light muttered as they treaded deeper into a hall even though Aoi could not remember when he had started walking or how.

Someone with Aoi’s voice snapped, “Sorry, guess I’ll breathe quieter for you,” but the sound came to his ears as if it had passed through a tank of water.

Light pulled on his arm hard enough to stop him. He blinked and struggled to remember that the reason there were colors and lights in his eyes was because he was not the blind one, Light was the blind one, _Aoi_ was the one who could see, who was supposed to be leading Light.

“That’s not what I mean, Aoi,” Light said in a hushed voice. “Are you alright?”

The vibration of the air in the shape of that belittling question felt like sandpaper in his ear. He heard Light thud against the wall before he saw the boy shoved there, by what he supposed were his own hands, since the left one was branded with the number of death, and there was his voice again, yelling, “What the fuck do _you_ care?!”

Light was a logical person, too logical to care about someone worth less than dirt.

“Why the _fuck_ did you—”

His voice was much higher now, fragile, and it stopped in his throat when he had to suck cold air back into his lungs again.

“—jump in _front_ of me when he—?!”

He had to stop to breathe again.

“Aoi, it’s over,” Light shouted. “He’s not here anymore.”

He caught Aoi by the elbows and squeezed. His left index finger clamped too hard, but the pain was satisfying, and Aoi found himself sinking into the sensation, lingering in that ache, willing Light to squeeze harder and harder until those robotic fingers bored a bloody hole through his skin and his bones gave a delicious snap.

“Listen to me, Aoi,” Light ordered. “Your body is having a physiological reaction to immediate danger that no longer exists. If you _listen_ to me, I can help you.”

“I don’t _want_ fuckin’—” Aoi gasped for air. “—your fuckin’ help, you—”

“I didn’t want yours either, but I _needed_ it,” Light shot back. “Will you swallow your pride for _one_ minute before you have a panic attack?”

“Fuck—”Aoi tried to wrench his weak arms away from Light’s grip; failing that, he used the leverage of their connected weight to shove Light back against the wall again. “— _off_ , I’m not—leave me the _fuck_ a—”

Light’s grip tightened even more, and Aoi could not stifle a yelp as the mechanical vise below his elbow pinched harder. It was the tipping point of pain, where it stopped feeling _right_ in a sickening way and started feeling just plain bad.

“You’re hyperventilating. You’re screaming. _Aoi_.”

_Everything_ felt bad. That clamp on his right arm pinned Aoi to a body in such agony that it was no wonder his mind had tried to escape it. His lungs felt like fire, his limbs like ice. The world was not fading into a haze, it was his vision pulsing and swimming from lightheadedness. Despite the horror of it all, everything he was experiencing was real.

“This is what a panic attack is, Aoi,” Light said. “I _know_. The same thing is happening to—”

“M’gonna die.”

The words slipped past his numb lips at the same time the realization came into his head. He felt his gut seize as if giving up on a body that was about to expire. His legs buckled, bringing his inevitable corpse down with them.

“M’gonna die. M’gonna die. M’gonn—gonna—”

It was running like liquid, too swift and impossible to catch with his hands even when he clasped both of them over his mouth, trying to keep back the words, to keep back the bile he thought he could feel rising in his throat, to keep back the scream he was sure he would let out if he could breathe, but he was suffocating, choking to death. For all Aoi knew, this ship had already sunk, and he was drowning, his face plunged underwater, drowning out the sound of Light calling his name, shouting his name.

“Aoi, the threat is gone.” Even through a wall of water, Light’s voice sounded too distorted, almost strained. “Everyone’s safe. You’re safe right now. You’re _safe_.”

With his eyes shut tight and his breath shaky, Light was saying the words to himself as much as he was saying them to Aoi. The sounds echoed in Aoi’s head, suddenly swelling heavy with blood, as he realized just how hard it was to convince himself it was true.

Right now, Akane was safe.

A screaming chorus in the back of his head shouted _no_ , their voices carried by machine gun bullets firing at his back, much too loud to overcome.

“Listen to me,” Light said, and for that moment, he was louder.

Things went black at the corners of his eyes when he exhaled, but Light said he had to count to four before he could breathe again, and the counting was just right, the way Light drew out the sound of each number as he spoke them aloud so Aoi’s thoughts could not creep into the silences between them, and then he started counting in English, too, and Aoi thought of his mother pressing the tips of her fingers to his little ones as she taught him his numbers so he could come to America with his parents someday.

“You’re not in danger. No one is,” Light repeated. “You’re alright. Your sister is alright. Everyone’s alright.”

The tight ball in his chest had begun to unwind. From its center emerged a nauseating knot, one he could not understand, needed to understand, did not want to understand.

“Why’d you jump in front of me?”

His voice barely scraped above a whisper. He had ended up on the floor, his hands limp by his sides as he watched his chest heave underneath his drooping head, his legs folded and splayed to the sides. Light knelt before him, hugging one knee to his chest.

“You know he was… he was pointing the gun right at me,” Aoi said. “He was _shooting_ at me. You coulda been…”

Light sighed for the length of four beats. “It wasn’t a very safe gamble. From the contents of those files we found behind door [1]… I wagered that he would consider me too valuable to kill.” His chin settled lower against his knee, concealing his lips. “I… wasn’t as sure that he thought the same of you. So—”

“He wasn’t—did you fucking _see_ him?! He wasn’t thinking _anything_!”

He had managed to keep his eyes free of tears, but his voice still sounded hoarse as if he were crying, and that was all that Light would know. And for the same reason, Light would _not_ know—

“No, I didn’t see him, actually.” Light rolled his sightless eyes, wearing a half-smile.

Aoi gave him a light push against his shoulder. “Knock it off,” he exhaled. “Just don’t… don’t pull that shit again, okay. Nobody thinks as much as you do. Think about that next time you’re thinkin’ too much.”

Before Aoi, too, could hear Nona’s pounding footsteps echoing down the corridor, Light yanked them both to their feet. “Will you be alright?” he whispered as she turned the corner.

_Alright_ was a standard Aoi had never held himself to. His head was still swimming, and his stomach still felt a second away from puking, but he could function. When Nona waved at them from the end of the hallway, he tapped the back of Light’s shoulder as a gesture to follow and forced his weak legs in her direction. He counted his steps in groups of four and breathed to the rhythm as he picked up his pace.

“Do you guys have the Uranus keycard?” she called out to them. “Akane said…”

Aoi could not respond. His head flooded with thoughts of his sister, of bitter delight that she had spoken to _someone_ , even if she would not speak to him.

“We did find _a_ keycard, but we’re not sure of the symbol,” Light replied. “Have you found a place for it?”

“Yeah, it’s—way far away, there’s another locked door, but it’s got a keycard slot.” Once they caught up to her, she lifted her hands from her knees and started running in the opposite direction again. “It’s kinda like the male symbol, with a dot in the middle…”

Aoi slipped the card out of his pocket and nodded along with Nona’s description. “We got it,” he said. “Uranus.”

“And presumably through here, we’ll discover the Neptune key for the door we found earlier.” Light gave a sarcastic laugh. “Ironic that we seem to be getting as far from the Sun as possible.”

“How’s Akane?” Aoi panted. “Is she okay?”

“I mean, I guess,” Nona said, throwing her hands up before she continued to pump them at her sides while she ran. “I dunno, she’s not… I dunno.”

Aoi inhaled for four beats, and held his breath for four more.

“Light, can you keep an eye on her?” he pleaded.

“I could try, but it wouldn’t do much good,” Light retorted.

“Oh, for Chrissakes, would you quit—”

“ _Yes_ , I’ll look out for her, Aoi.” Light gave him a warm smile.

The lights grew dim in the hall as they traversed what might have been the full length of the ship. By the time they reached the Uranus door, the only light remaining was the red LED in the card reader, casting a faint, chilling glow onto Akane’s face as she turned around to watch her brother approach. Claire was wrapped around her waist, clinging to her as though afraid she might disappear if she let go. When Aoi lingered too long in his stupor, Nona snatched the key from his hand and swiped it herself.

Listening to the churn of machinery as the door rolled aside, Light fell into synchronization with his sister. He heard the chorus of awed voices, from children beside him and from children an ocean away, as the next room came into view. His sister took the first steps forward of her group, and so did he of his.

Someone grasped his sleeve, nearly pulling his prosthetic loose when they jerked him back.

“Uh, shit. Yeah, guess this wouldn’t bug you at all, would it.”

“What’s the matter?” Light asked with a frown.

“Ennea!” Nona shouted. “Ennea, tell everyone to come back to the door for a second. Violet and Reed are okay, but tell everyone else to come back to the door. Oh, gosh. Okay.”

_Clover pulled Holly’s wrist and gave a quick translation after Ennea told them to halt. They wandered back to the door, staring all the while at the circular shelves filled to the brim, at the narrow paths with delicate rails that crossed through the center of the room, at the spiraling staircases leading to a lower floor, at the note on the table by the entrance that read, “Light to the books!”_

“Light to the books. Well, if I must,” Light joked to himself. “Aoi, Nona, what’s going on?”

“They shut off the lights in here,” Aoi said. “It’s pitch black.”

Light’s lips stiffened into something close to a snarl. The deeper they traveled into this wretched ship, the more the puzzles stank of Gentarou Hongou’s selfish desires. He had no use for the slow-moving transmission between Ren and Aiko, nor the auditory and emotional signals traveling from Kenshin to Nobu. He wanted to test the viability of instantaneous visual processing.

“Um, Aoi, Akane,” Nona mumbled, running her fingers through her hair. “You guys can—you can try to follow one of us, I guess? I was gonna… I’m gonna try to copy everything Ennea’s doing, follow her exactly, and maybe that’ll…”

“<Claire, will you be alright to navigate in here with your sister’s help?>” Light asked.

“<Oh! Yeah, sure, I think I’m okay,>” she replied. “<Is everyone else okay? I can walk people around if y’need.>”

“<That’s alright. Just follow your sister. Call out if you need anything.>” Light held out his hand to the darkness. “Akane, would you like to walk with me?”

“She took off already,” Aoi muttered. “Still seein’ somethin’, somehow, I guess.”

“Well.” Light moved his hand towards the sound of Aoi’s voice. “Would _you_ like to walk with me?”

Aoi groaned. “You _seriously_ gotta stop makin’ everything you say sound gay.”

“Hold my hand so you don’t lose track of me,” Light teased.

Nona giggled. Light felt a brush against his sleeve like Aoi was trying to send him a soft punch and misjudged it in the darkness.

“It’s actually easiest to hold onto the upper arm, in my experience,” Light said, leaning towards him with his arm extended. “Shall we? Or you could wait here while the rest of us search for the way out.”

Aoi’s warm hand made a tense, but not tight, grip just under his shoulder. “If you run me into a wall…”

“Aoi,” Light sighed.

“Everyone okay, then?” Nona said. “Ennea, you can start moving. Everyone can start moving again, we’re all ready to follow.”

Light did not follow Clover as she scurried after Holly, although he heard Claire’s little feet patter off in the same direction. He waited for Nona and her sister to cross the room before he spoke.

“If shielding you from a man with a gun doesn’t get you to trust me, what will?” he muttered to Aoi.

Aoi’s grip faltered. “I didn’t ask for that.”

“Aoi, you…” Light cut himself off with a sigh so heavy it made his shoulders sag. “I trusted you to guide me, and you always have. Trust me to guide you.”

He scoffed. “I trust you to trip me up for a joke.”

“The temptation is present, and growing ever larger with your continued resistance, but I promise I will not.”

“Oh, shoot—um, Light?!” Nona called warily.

Light led with his shoulder as he moved towards the sound of her voice. “The walkway is narrow and the railings seem flimsy,” he warned. “Stay close.”

“What the hell is this room,” Aoi grumbled, shuffling in step behind Light.

“A library,” replied Light.

Aoi froze in his stride before scrambling to keep up with Light. “What the hell kinda library has…?!”

“It’s… a very cool library,” Light said with a wide smile.

On a low, sparse shelf, four books with Roman letters spelled something in English when arranged in the correct order. Ennea had been able to solve the puzzle by recognizing the word _< OPEN>_, and Nona might have been able to do the same, were she able to see the letters. Light ran a sensitive finger over the embossed foil on the spines, slipping them on and off the shelves with one deft hand until a small scratch of a shutter sliding open rose above the sound of shuffling books.

“It’s a lightbulb,” Nona said, groping around the wall for the secret slot until she had grabbed a handful of smooth glass. “If there’s somewhere we can plug this in, maybe—”

“Downstairs.”

Aoi shivered at the sound of Akane’s cool voice floating into his ear from just behind him. She brushed against him as she passed, and must have bumped directly into Light by the way his arm jostled, before taking the bulb from Nona and taking her leave. Aoi heard her boots on a staircase.

“Would you prefer if I left you and kept a proverbial eye on her?” Light asked softly.

Aoi shrugged. “Not like she can go too far, anyway.”

“Then tread carefully, because we’re about to descend a disconcertingly narrow spiral staircase.”

No sooner had he said that than there was a thud of a misstep rattling the metal stairs, followed by a heavy clatter, and, delayed by a gasp, a soft yelp.

After an instinctive lurch forward, Aoi clenched Light’s arm. “Take me to her,” he demanded.

“N-no, i-i-it’s just me,” Nona called in a pinched, high voice. “I-it’s— _ow_ —it’s not Akane, it’s—”

“I _know_ it’s you, Nona,” Aoi shouted, shaking Light’s arm. “Take me there!”

Light was already leading him, albeit too slowly and cautiously to placate his nerves. “Please be careful,” he sighed. “The last thing we need is both of you injured. Nona, are you still on the stairs?”

“A-ah, y-yeah, I can get out of the— _ow_ , agh—”

Aoi gave another start at the sound of her sudden cry. “Jesus, don’t move if you can’t!”

“Behind me, Aoi.” Light pried Aoi’s hand from its tense grip and carried it to the railing of the staircase. “Nona, keep talking, I can locate you by sound.”

“Yeah, what’d you hurt?” Aoi stayed no more than a few inches behind Light on the stairs, bumping into his back with every step. “Did you fall bad or is it just your foot?”

“Just my—I think it’s my ankle, I— _ugh_ —it just—I dunno, it’s—”

A touch settled onto her shoulder from behind. “Aoi,” said Light, “do you trust me?”

Aoi gave a twitch and froze. “Why the hell d’you keep—?”

“Vault over the railing on the right. Nona is blocking the way down. Follow the railing around to the foot of the stairs to get in front of her.”

Light already heard and felt the railing shaking from Aoi climbing over it by the time he finished his first sentence. The metal pickets rang out like tines as Aoi dragged his fingers across them from the opposite side. It bothered him to say it aloud, perhaps to even admit it to himself, but he did trust Light.

“Okay, uh, where’s your foot?” Aoi asked, then suddenly, “ _Oof_.”

“ _Ow_ —oh my God, did I just kick—?”

Light let out an exasperated sigh. “Aoi, hold out your hand towards me,” he said.

Aoi’s hand was rigid, fingers spread, when Light found it in the air. It clasped onto his so tightly, desperately, that Light paused before tugging him to touch Nona’s shoulder.

“Nona, take Aoi’s hand and move it to your foot,” he instructed. “You have better sense of your own body than of each other.”

“I’m gonna take off your shoe, okay? Lemme know if it hurts to touch,” Aoi said. “Tryna hold you steady here. Try wiggling your toes. …That hurt at all?”

“A… a little…”

“Alright. Probably not broken, but don’t walk on it if you can help it. There somewhere you can sit around here?”

Light gave a dry laugh. “No,” he said. “A library with nowhere to sit. That’s certainly a design oversight.”

“Can’t believe I’m tellin’ the _blind_ kid to shut up about aesthetics,” Aoi grumbled.

“Oh my God, I’m gonna have to get back upstairs,” Nona moaned. “The exit’s upstairs, I’m gonna have to…”

“You’re fine. Lemme help you up. Don’t lean on your bad foot, lean on me if you gotta. You stay close to the railing, I’ll…”

“ _You_ will stay here, Aoi,” Light said sharply. “One of us actually has experience navigating stairs without being able to see.”

He slid his arm under Nona’s shoulders from behind, but Aoi’s arm did not withdraw. “ _One_ of us used to have an apartment where there was a spiral staircase,” he retorted, “and I climbed it in the middle of the night all the damn time.”

“Please, boys, there’s enough of me to go around,” Nona sighed. “Except, not really, ’cuz I can’t reach the railing anymore? Guys.”

“Get outta the way, Light,” Aoi snapped.

With a sigh, Light eased away from Nona and stepped down to the foot of the stairs as the two ascended. He kept an ear on their first few footsteps, judging the weight and the timing, before he gave yet another sigh and drifted back. There was a certain quality to Aoi’s timbre that Light was only recognizing in retrospect, one that arose in times of crisis and disguised itself as determined leadership. Now that Light had heard that same tone emerge in the throes of sheer panic, he saw it for what it truly was: a frenzied grab for control over a situation that had begun to spiral.

“Akane,” Light said gently to the slow, soft steps behind him, “you’ve found the lecterns with the missing lightbulbs, I presume?”

Her reply came after an unnatural pause, and even then it was nothing more than a soft, “Mm-hmm.”

“But no luck turning the lights on?” Light guessed.

He held out a hand in front of him to detect the unusual stand at the center of the lower floor, with three empty racks to hold a book, and three empty sockets for lightbulbs. His fingers glided around the wooden panels enclosing the space in a nonagon, seeking the same industrial switch that had turned on a bright light for Clover’s group in Building Q. He flicked it to one side, then back to the other, moving slowly between strokes to hear a reaction. The silence in the library told him that he had cast no light.

“Are people born good and evil?”

Light cocked his head towards Akane’s little voice. “What in the world makes you ask that?” he chuckled.

Again, she paused, and when she spoke, it was slow and distracted. “Can people change so much?” she wondered. “Can a good person turn evil? …Can an evil person turn good?”

“I certainly believe it’s possible,” said Light, drawing nearer. “It may be true that we’re inclined one way or another from birth, but our experiences shape us, and our own choices are ultimately what determine our fate.”

She only came up to his breastbone when she leaned her head against his chest for a brief repose. Though she eased into the touch, a shockwave ran through Light’s body on contact. He was slow, but not by lack of sight, to find her shoulder with his hand.

“What’s troubling you?” he asked softly.

“What if, in the future,” she said, “Hongou is… a nice person?”

“I would still hate him very much,” Light said without missing a beat.

“What if,” she whispered, “my brother turns evil?”

Without a second thought, Light smirked and shook his head. “I’ve known your brother for only a few hours, Akane,” he said, “but I know that he’s a good person, to his very core.”

“I think he’s going to do something really, really bad someday,” Akane breathed.

“Oh, I certainly wouldn’t put it past him to do bad things,” Light said. “But he’ll have a good reason for it, I’m sure. Don’t you think?”

“I think…” She gave a solemn nod. “I think maybe the lightbulbs aren’t missing where Jumpy is because it’s the same lightbulbs we’re putting in right now. That’s why they’re all old and dull.”

“Is that so,” Light said, having understood not a single word.

She had nothing more to say after that. She did not react when Light held her tighter against his chest; she kept her arms folded all the while. He might have never let her go, had he not heard the top of the stairs rattling and known exactly whose unsure step had made that noise.

“Aoi,” he called.

“I’m fine. I got it. Just—misjudged the first step, it’s fine.”

Nona situated herself at the edge of the table near the entrance of the library, laying out her twisted ankle across its surface to keep it elevated at Aoi’s instruction. With that settled, he had reached the extent of his useful knowledge, both medical and architectural. When Light, after gliding to the top of the stairs two steps at a time, asked what in the world he was thinking, Aoi had only a wordless grumble to give as his answer. He shrugged the feather-light hand off his shoulder before it could settle.

“<Um, Light? Can you help me?>”

Light turned his head downstairs towards the sound of Claire’s call. “<One moment,>” he said, laying his hand back upon Aoi’s shoulder. “<I’m a bit busy trying to tame a stubborn cat.>”

“<What? A _cat_? >” Claire repeated.

“What did you call me?” Aoi demanded, giving a sharper jerk of his shoulder to shed Light’s hand.

“<Oh, dear, I’ll have to… _diversify_ my vocabulary, >” Light warned. “<The cat has a more extensive understanding of English than I… _presumed_. >”

The joyous and musical giggle that rolled out of Claire’s mouth rang all the way to the high ceilings until she stifled herself with a tremendous snort. Aoi gave Light a knuckled jab in the shoulder and yelled, “What the hell are you saying?!”

“Aoi,” said Light, “if you’re going to insist on helping, even when you, yourself, are at the greatest disadvantage of all of us right now, will you at least let me guide you?”

Though it came only after a reluctant pause, the thump of a hand against his shoulder was the sound of Aoi giving in.

“<On our way, Claire,>” Light reported as they descended. “<What seems to be the problem?>”

The combination to open the glass cabinet was in plain sight in Building Q. Claire had seen it, but Holly had never bothered to commit it to memory before moving on. “<I think it starts [415], but I can’t remember the rest,>” she said. “<And even if I’ve got the numbers right, I can’t get the lock turned right, I can’t see the…>”

“<Can you tell your sister to come back and look at the code?>” Light asked.

It took Claire a few seconds to respond, because the question seemed so bizarre, she thought perhaps it was not meant for her. “<Me?>” she said. “<Naw, I can’t talk to her.>”

“Need me to get Nona to tell her sister?” Aoi asked.

Light’s fingers paused over the shapes of the numbers on the dials. “You really do know more English than I thought,” he murmured.

“S’easier to understand than to speak.” Aoi shrugged. “So y’do need Nona, right?”

“I’m… not sure yet,” said Light. “I’d like to try something first.”

_After Violet found the first pop-up book hiding amongst the academic volumes, Clover knew she was supposed to keep her eyes glued to the shelves, scrutinizing the bindings for an out-of-place color. Nonetheless, she could not stop staring across the floor to the glass cabinet for some reason._

“<She’s so close,>” Light whispered into his hand as he held his chin. “<It’s… so close.>”

_Sometimes it hit her out of nowhere how much she missed her brother._

Aoi felt Light’s shoulder twitch. “Light?” he asked.

“Clover?”

_“ <Alright, Clover?>” Holly asked._

_She snapped back to scanning the shelves. “ <Yeah, I’m okay.>”_

Light let out his tightly held breath on a heavy sigh.

“[632415].”

This time, Akane’s voice made everyone jump, though Aoi of course startled most violently. His breathing still sounded shallow by the time Light had lined up the numbers and tugged open the lock. With a bit of a shuffle and the gentle rattle of glass rolling against wood, Claire grabbed the lightbulb hidden inside. Before Light could ask if she knew where to take it, her feet were pattering in the direction of the light stand. There was a gentle thud and a tiny “< _ow_ , whoops>” when she stubbed her toe against the base of the structure.

“This is going to be a disaster,” Light exhaled.

Aoi’s hand, which had stayed loose on Light’s sleeve, sinking ever so slowly, grew tighter. “Wh—what?”

“This entire room is filled from the floor to the ceiling—across two floors, might I add—with books,” Light informed him. “The objective of the puzzle seems to be to locate three specific books, as well as three lightbulbs, hiding amongst these shelves. We’ve found two of the more obviously placed bulbs, but as you might be able to see, screwing them in did nothing for our lighting situation. Finding the third bulb, and _any_ of the books, is going to be nigh on impossible, and I’m not sure we would be able to observe them in any case. The only ones who can solve this puzzle are the children in Building Q.”

“So… so what do we do?” Aoi asked.

“Your absolute least favorite activity, if I know you at all,” Light replied with a smile. “Do nothing and wait.”

Aoi’s hand sank again as he groaned. The quiet had not yet settled before he began shifting his weight with unease.

“Is… your resonance with your sister,” Light began slowly, “is it usually an ever-present sort of thing? As in, you always… feel her in the background, in a way, even if she’s not consciously transmitting.”

Aoi scratched his neck under his scarf. “I… I dunno, I can’t really tell what’s what, honestly,” he mumbled. “Maybe that means it’s always on, or whatever, if I can’t figure out when it’s off. Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“And has it been interrupted since we got on this ship?” Light guessed. “Since her resonance seems to have shifted to some other source. Has that affected your connection to her?”

“I dunno.” Aoi’s neck did not itch anymore. It may never have itched in the first place, but he was still scratching. “I’m still… gettin’ stuff from her, I think. Every now ’n’ then.”

“Well, it was only a theory,” Light said to himself.

_Holly kept asking Clover whether she was alright when she got to staring off into space again, so often that Violet started picking up the habit, too. She would rub at her eyes and call herself tired while she wondered why she felt so terribly lonely all of a sudden._

It was not quite loneliness. Though the memories were almost a decade old now, Light recognized this feeling from a single glimpse. He might have called it “emptiness” at the time, but in retrospect, he knew the better phrase was perhaps “half-empty”.

“Do you remember what life was like before your sister was born?” Light asked softly. “Or, rather, what it _wasn’t_ like. On the day she was born, how everything seemed to… fall into place.”

Aoi scoffed. “Well, I was two and a half, so no.”

Light jerked his head in Aoi’s direction. “Aoi… how old are you?”

He, too, gave a small jolt. “F-fifteen. How… wait, how old are…?”

“Also fifteen. Then Akane is—twelve or thirteen?”

“Yeah, twelve and change. Nice math, genius. What’s your problem?”

He shrugged. “I suppose she’s small for her age.”

Innocuous lines that Aoi had dropped throughout the night suddenly wove into a story that Light was beginning to read when Aoi’s reaction was a twitching shudder, and a quiet, defensive, “M’doin’ my best.”

The silence was as heavy as his hand. Light could not feel exactly how far down his artificial arm Aoi’s grip had sunk. He waited until the tension on his sleeve stopped shifting for the most opportune moment to speak again.

“Aoi, are you perhaps _trying_ to hold my hand?”

As the heat rose in his face, Aoi gave Light’s forearm—indeed, that was what he had been gripping by this point—a great shove. “I’m _not_ —my arm’s _tired_ , jackass, I can’t—I’m wrenchin’ my arm all the way up to hold your shoulder like that, I ain’t—”

“This height is tiring out your arm?”

Without warning, Aoi felt Light’s hand pressed against his chest, middle finger nestled into the space between his collarbones.

“Oh, you’re _both_ small for your age.” His hand slid over Aoi’s collarbone and gripped his shoulder. “Are you standing up straight? How tall _are_ you?”

Aoi stiffened his spine. “Oh, shut up, I’m not _that_ —”

Light’s hand lifted, then came down with a pat on top of Aoi’s head. He let go of one soft, chiding little laugh.

“Listen, you ass, I know you ain’t had a good look around lately, but I’m tellin’ you I ain’t short, you’re just a fuckin’ beanpole, you—”

The point of Light’s chin met Aoi’s forehead. The breath of another laugh ruffled his hair before Light craned his head up a little more. His warm neck vibrated against Aoi’s face with his next laugh as he definitively proved that he stood a head taller than his companion.

_“Sheldrake,” Clover gasped after Holly peered into the center of the stands and read aloud the message from the shadows. She scurried to the low shelf near the stairs where she had seen the name before. It had stuck out to her, as if she were hearing it read in her brother’s voice, or maybe the robotic voice of his screenreader. Her eyes locked onto the [5] on the spine as she reached out._

“Wh… what?” Aoi squeaked.

Light blinked, then shut his eyes again. He took a step back, lifting his hand from the nape of Aoi’s neck as he moved away. “Nothing,” he said. “Did I say something out loud?”

“N-no, y—you…”

Aoi cupped a hand over his forehead as if trapping a firefly in his palm, with just as little idea of what to do with what he had caught as a child without a glass jar on a balmy summer evening.

“I heard something from my sister,” Light explained, giving Aoi’s shoulder a tap and then a gentle tug. “This should bring us to the next stage.”

Aoi deliberately grasped only fabric when he latched onto Light’s sleeve to follow. It took a long time for him to drop his other hand from his head and let whatever lay under it flutter away into the open air, perhaps never to be seen again.

“Really,” Light murmured as he slid his finger over the hardcovers, counting his way to the fifth volume. “This is _quite_ interesting.”

With a deft hand, he slid the book out of its spot, gripping the upper corner in his palm as he slid his finger deeper to press the button that caused the whole room to shift and rumble.

The small LCD panel behind the moving shelves cast a faint enough glow that Aoi was able to find his way to the password input without Light’s guidance. Although Nona was limping with what she insisted was only a little pain, Aoi kept a strong hand at her back as he walked her towards the revealed exit.

Light was the only one who knew how to touch-type on a standard English keyboard. With his right hand settled in the center of the keys in his own adapted style, he listened through Clover’s ears to Reed and Violet teasing out the password from the Roman numerals above the prompt. Cast in faint blue, Claire’s face folded into an uncomfortable frown as she watched Light press the keys. “<Dead?>” she read.

Aoi saw the word for only a blink before Light hit enter and the little screen winked out, but it reminded him of the headlines about his parents.

“<Oh! It’s open!>” Claire cheered, racing for the door. The handle was hidden in pure darkness, but they heard it squeaking as Claire tugged on the wheel with all her might.

“<Hold on, Claire,>” Light called. “Are we all here?”

“I’m here!” Nona piped up. “I’m coming, I’m here. I’m okay.”

“Yeah, I got her,” Aoi said. “Akane?”

His next heartbeat was nearly audible in the silence. The ones after that raced alongside the self-soothing internal murmur _she’s just quiet, she didn’t hear, she wasn’t listening, she’s fine,_ until he caught the edge of Light’s frown just before he, too, called out, “Akane?”

“ _Fuck._ ” Aoi slid away from Nona and started forward, only to bang his hip against the railing as he peered into darkness too thick to see. “Hey, Akane, you there?” he shouted. “Akane?!”

“Akane!” Claire mimicked. By the sound of the worry in her voice, she understood what she was saying, and why.

“Everyone, quiet,” Light ordered. “<Quiet.>”

No one said a word. Aoi dared not even breathe.

And then he heard that little sound that hurt him like nothing else, the sound that he hated to hear coming from her bedroom after school or late at night, that tiny, shuddering gasp that came between silent, heavy tears.

He felt Light’s hand around his arm before he knew how to move. As soon as the words “Take me” fell from his lips, Light was already responding, “I know,” and their feet were clattering across the floor. Aoi heard her sobbing right in front of him, but when he reached out, there was nothing there.

With a gentle hand, Light found her almost pressed flush to the floor, her knees folded underneath her. He tried to pull her into his arms once he found a grip on her shuddering shoulder, but her desperate huddle was too rigid to budge. He skimmed over her with worried fingertips, feeling the ridges of her arched spine through her sweater, touching the tense hands she sank into her hair, reading the trembling of her little body as she cried. “Akane,” he said, “what’s wrong?”

She made a little noise as though trying to speak, but only a strangled sob came out. Her head shook.

“Akane,” Aoi tried to say, but he choked.

He was not sure she had heard him until he felt something warm bump into his outstretched, empty hand. Then that warmth was the perfect weight against his chest, even if she was too hot, even if she was shaking, even if she was still so small despite everything he tried to do for her. He locked his arms around her with a gasp, a desperate breath of air he had not been able to take in for the past minute, perhaps for the past hour.

“I don’t wanna die,” she whimpered.

Aoi flinched so terribly that some kind of strangled noise escaped his throat in the involuntary motion that made him squeeze his sister even tighter.

“No, no, no, you’re okay,” he said as quickly as he could. “You’re not gonna—You’re gonna be okay, Akane, you’re gonna be okay. C’mon. We’re all gonna be okay.”

“Take a deep breath,” Light whispered, hand against her back. “Just breathe, Akane.”

Her voice squeaked as she inhaled, and as she exhaled, she repeated, “I don’t wanna die.”

When she said it the second time, they heard, behind the sheer terror, something eerily resigned in her voice. Her words were not the product of anxiety run wild, like Aoi’s own worries of imminent death always were. It was not a fear, it was an omen.

“You’re not—I won’t let them—you’re okay, Akane,” Aoi promised in a voice growing weaker by the second. “You’re okay. Akane. I got you, Akane, I got you. I got you, okay? You’re okay. C’mon. You’re okay. C’mon, let’s—let’s just get outta here, okay? _C’mon_.”

He tried three times to pick her limp body up off the floor, each time numbly wondering why everything felt too heavy, why his arms felt so weak, why this was not working when he knew for a fact that he could carry her if he wanted. When he tried a fourth time, Light’s arms were there alongside his.

Akane could stand upright only by leaning into Aoi’s chest. Aoi was not sure he could stand upright without Light’s arm against his back, guiding them towards the door he had lost track of. Aoi held Akane’s hand to the railing of the narrow walkway, coaxing her forward with words that felt hollower the more he said them: “It’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

The room beyond the library, while not plunged in darkness, was not strictly lit, either, but the glow from the monitors caused a sigh of relief to propagate through the sighted members of the group when Claire first opened the door. Aoi’s eyes fell to the floor as soon as he shuffled inside with his sister, and he came to a halt. Light frowned when he bumped into Aoi’s braced shoulder.

“Okay, don’t… don’t move,” Aoi uttered. “There’s shit _all_ over the floor.”

In the back of his head, he was faintly aware of some protest Light made at being pulled forward as he kicked the junk aside to clear a path. The sight of what was scattered at his feet captured his attention too fully: spare scanner panels in both red and blue, unlatched bracelets with blank displays, spare keys and keycards engraved with symbols they had already seen, diagrams and drafts of puzzles that, not too long ago, had taken them ages to solve. He jolted out of his dazed stare at the sound of the door slamming shut. Light had an arm stretched out towards it in vain, just out of reach after Aoi had dragged him away.

“I’m not even going to bother,” Light said with a huff, but Aoi still surged past him to give the locked door a futile try.

“We still haven’t found the Neptune key, right?” Nona said, peering into the chaos. “S- _somewhere_ in here must be…”

“Alright, split up and search?” Aoi said on a heavy sigh, throwing his hands from the wheel on the door. “You gonna be alright, Nona?”

Her gait was uneven, but steady. “I’m okay.”

“Okay, just… just holler if you need. Light, you stick with me, you’re gonna trip on somethin’ in here if you go off alone, it’s a mess.” Aoi squeezed his little sister’s shoulder. “You okay, kid?”

Without giving a reply, she drifted towards one of the computers. Aoi’s hand hung in midair where her shoulder had been. She lifted her hands to her face as she walked, rubbing tears off of her cheeks.

“Take me to the telegraph key,” Light said quietly. “I’ll work out the solution with Clover. I’ll be fine on my own.”

Although he took Aoi’s arm, Aoi never felt as though he was actually guiding Light at all.

Everyone but Aoi settled in front of their own puzzles. Akane pored over the controls in front of a set of three monitors, her fingers tracing the empty indentations on the panel with a curious touch. Nona had already started at a puzzle of her own, letting a soft series of beeps echo through the room as she tapped squares and turned them red and green in a way Aoi could not understand at a glance. He snapped his gaze towards the sound of a notched wheel turning, and found Claire twisting a large, compass-like wheel with both hands.

“Oh, hey,” he muttered, jogging over. “<Claire, I… I know this. I see this. Door [1], I see this. I… tell you? Do you know how to do this?>”

Claire beamed up at him, eyes glittering at the sound of her native tongue on his lips. “<Yeah, I got it,>” she said. “<My sister did door [1], too. She’s tellin’ me how it works.>”

Aoi gave a soft laugh that made his shoulders sag. “Right. <Yes,>” he said, scratching his head. “<I… did not remember sister… door [1], too. Okay. You okay?>”

“<Yep! Thanks, cat.>”

Aoi frowned, thinking perhaps he had misheard, or that it was some quirk of her dialect, until he heard Light stifle a laugh from the other side of the room.

“Why d’you two keep callin’ me a <cat>?” Aoi demanded, marching towards him.

Light tossed his head back and held up his hands to count the reasons. “You’re temperamental, you’re proud, you’re stubborn, slow to trust, possibly feral…”

Aoi seized the lapels of Light’s jacket in one fist and tugged. Light only grinned more broadly.

“But despite all of that,” he said in a gentle whisper, “<you’re quite cute.>”

Aoi let go immediately. The blood rushing in his ears blocked out the sound of Light laughing even harder. He felt the phantom of the firefly on his forehead again, before the heat in his face washed out all sensation. “Y… you can’t even see,” he protested, breathless.

“I’m only teasing, Aoi,” he chuckled, but there was too much genuine delight in his smile to believe him.

“<Oh! I got a prize!>”

Claire flew across the room, clutching the badge to her chest, to present her winnings to Akane. It was like watching some kind of glitched video, where one subject was being fast-forwarded while the other was stuck in slow motion. Akane carefully plucked the emblem from Claire’s open palms, then gently placed it in its spot in the console. The flickering light on her face changed hues ever so slightly. She looked up, but not quite at the screen.

With a faint sense of something on the cusp of horror, Aoi watched as his sister sorted colored circles into two rectangles. From the way she hesitated and mulled over her choices, he knew there had to be a rhyme or reason to it, though he could not see it. When he stole a glance at Claire, she looked just as baffled as he.

He held out a hand just over Akane’s shoulder, so close he could imagine the way her sweater felt against the skin of his palm. In those fleeting moments he could bear to take his eyes off of her, he glanced at the screen, waiting for her to finish, waiting for her hand to drop from the mouse so he could grab it and hold it and never let go.

The machine let out a cheerful chime when the arrangement of circles was somehow correct. He moved as soon as he heard it. Her soft gasp filled his ear as he hugged her against his chest.

“You okay?” he murmured.

Her cheek against his, she nodded slowly.

Aoi’s grip tightened. “I’m here,” he promised. “Whatever you need, I’m here, okay?”

She went stiff in his arms for a second, but he could not bring himself to let go. They stood there in a grim silence that eventually persuaded Claire to toddle away. She clasped her hands behind her back to keep them from fidgeting as she peered aimlessly into dark corners, listening to the other machines click and beep as Nona and Light worked their way through the puzzles remaining.

“Are you sure?” Akane whispered.

Aoi gave a little twitch at the unexpected sound of her voice. “Am I… what?”

She pressed a knuckle to her lips, head sinking.

“What… whatever you need? I’m here?” he asked. His chest grew cold. “Is that what you…?”

She took a moment to give a nod, and it was slow when she finally gave it.

“C’mon, what kinda question is that.” He gave her a quick kiss on her left temple. “I’ll do anything for you, period. What’s up?”

Her hands journeyed up to his arms, folded across her chest.

He jumped at the sound of Claire cheering when Light, too, won a so-called prize for his efforts at the telegraph key. The emblem did not quite fit in the next open slot on Akane’s console. Claire pried it back up and tried the indentation just after it. Although it fit like a charm, the screen did not react to the entry as it had earlier. “<Reckon we need this one first,>” Claire decided, tracing her finger around the empty second shape.

They all glanced around the room in search of where they might find it, and their eyes all fell on Nona. With one hand moving and twitching over the mouse, and the other holding her weary head, she gave her screen a nearly blinkless stare, not looking up as the other kids slowly gathered around her screen.

“So, what, y’need them to all be green?” Aoi guessed, and that was when Nona snapped.

“I _know_ what I need to do,” With the back of her hand pressed to one eye or the other, and with her voice taking on a new, fragile quality, she jabbed at two of the nine squares on the screen. “I know these ones have to be off, and the rest of them have to be on, I _know_ that’s what I’m supposed to—I just— _can’t_ —”

Light found her shoulder and followed it down to her hand when she started pounding a fist against the console. “Step back,” he murmured. “Take a deep breath. This isn’t worth your anger.”

But anger was the only wall holding back her tears. While she sank into the invitation of his outstretched arm, shuddering with frustrated sobs, Akane slipped past to take hold of the mouse. Claire leaned her elbows against the console and watched Akane’s moves with quick, bright eyes. She started pointing at squares she wanted Akane to click, and when the one she wanted Akane to click was on the top row, she climbed up onto the console to reach it. As for Aoi, Nona’s anxiety was nipping too sharply at his own, so he started pacing the workshop, searching for any other stone left unturned.

There was one very large stone he wished he had just left alone.

“ _Shit._ Fuck. God.” His voice was almost drowned out by the rattle of the shutter slamming back down. He kept hissing curses as he stomped away from the closet, wearing a grimace and clutching his own arms.

“Aoi?” Light called hesitantly.

“It’s nothing. It’s fine. Jesus _Christ_.”

“What is it?” he pressed.

“It’s—” He rolled his eyes and snapped out an arm towards the storage space as swiftly as possible, as if unable to spare it another glance. “There’s a—there’s a fucking _coffin_ in there.”

With Light’s help, Nona had settled into that transient place where tears can swiftly be coaxed into laughter, and Aoi had unintentionally brought her to the lighter side now. “Were you scared?” she snickered. “D’you think there’s a _mummy_ inside?”

“What?! No, I’m not—it was just fuckin’—I just opened the thing, and it was—it was just _right there_ , in my face—I wasn’t—I was _startled_ , maybe, is all, I wasn’t fuckin’—”

Light had thought about correcting Nona with the knowledge that a mummy would almost never be found in a standard coffin, only a sarcophagus, but he held his tongue to hear Aoi scrambling to defend himself. To his mild disappointment, Aoi was saved by the bell, or the electronic equivalent, when Claire and Akane successfully configured the square. The two of them hurried back to the other computer with the new emblem they had received. Light stayed put, having heard a sound that no one else would have noticed.

“That’s three,” Aoi muttered. “So where’s the fourth?”

“Do you really want to know?” Light asked with the grin of a demon.

“Wh… what the hell? Where is it?”

“You weren’t scared of the coffin, right?” Light said. “So you’ll have no problem opening it now that I’m _sure_ I’ve just heard it unlocking.”

There was silence, and then Nona started laughing at Aoi’s pale face, and Aoi started muttering curses again.

Despite any fear he might have been hiding, he was able to open the coffin hastily, though he complained of the thick stench inside, like someone had left something rotting in it for half a century. From the bottom of the musty coffin, he pulled out both the final emblem, and the key they had been wanting for over an hour. With the trident of Neptune in his hand, Aoi was sure he had triumphed over the ocean threatening to swallow him whole.

Akane solved each of the remaining puzzles unlocked by the badges with barely a pause between them. After clearing the final screen, a drawer under the desk popped open. Nona snatched up the keycard inside before anyone else saw the flash of bright yellow. She hobbled her way to the door, tailed eagerly by Claire. Light started to follow, but he stopped when he did not hear Aoi move. Aoi did not move because he could not get Akane to move.

She stared vacantly at the empty screens. Just when Nona and Claire were beginning to stare, she turned her head slowly to Aoi, blinked once, and whispered, “You’ll do anything?”

He brought his hands down maybe too heavily onto her little shoulders. “Yeah. Anything. C’mon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is mostly dedicated to kit, but I'd also like to throw in a belated shoutout to my college roommate ryan, who once descended our apartment’s spiral staircase in the middle of the night and broke both of his legs and had to take a leave of absence from school for the rest of the year. I looked up the map of the library for something else after writing that part and realized it wasn’t really a spiral, it just curves a little with the circular walls, but whatever I’ve been taking creative liberties this whole time anyway haven’t I


	16. Incinerator

“You’re gonna fuck up your ankle even worse if you don’t move slow. We got a lotta ground to cover here.”

Nona clenched her jaw. She gripped Aoi’s back more tightly to keep her weight off of her bad foot but did not slow her lopsided pace. At every other step, Aoi glanced over his shoulder at the girl who still lagged behind, no matter how slowly he made Nona walk. The shape of Light by her side settled his nerves a little.

He was starting to turn his head back to the front when he heard her shallow gasp ring through the dark hall. He stopped dead in his tracks, and so did she, and Nona let out a squeal and hooked her fingers onto the loop of his scarf to stay upright at his sudden weight shift.

“Akane, what’s wrong,” he demanded.

Her head snapped up, left, right, back, all around, looking for something she had suddenly lost. “I need to go back,” she sputtered. “I have to—I can’t hear him anymore, I—I don’t know where he…!”

He saw it in her legs a split second before she bolted. It was nowhere near enough time to ask Nona if she could stand on her own a minute; by the time he opened his mouth, it was just in time shout his sister’s name.

Light was a blur in the half-darkness of the hallway. As soon as Nona let go of Aoi’s shoulders, Light had already caught Akane, trapping her against his chest with both arms. “Please don’t run off, Akane,” he sighed. “What’s wrong? Who are you looking for?”

“ _Jumpy!_ ”

It always made Aoi uneasy to hear her talk about that boy with unconditional adoration in her eyes, out of an instinct to protect her from a boy whom he knew, from her stories, was an utter fool. Hearing his name here on this ship, for the second time, made him feel sick to his stomach again.

“He’s here, Akane,” Light said with a gentle smile. He gave her cheek a stroke with his thumb as he tucked hair behind her ear. “You showed me, back in the captain’s quarters. Didn’t you tell me that he’s always with you?”

Her eyebrows unknotted, and her rapid breathing started to slow. She even managed a weak smile as she slipped a hand into her pocket.

The thing she brought out of her pocket made Aoi jump about a foot in the air with shivers in his spine.

“What?!” Claire cried, but she had a look in her eyes like she was tremendously thrilled by the horrible sight. Light took a quick, unsettled step back from Akane, and from the object he had never really seen but was now quite nervous about.

“What the f—” Aoi cut himself off in the middle of a curse as he jabbed a finger at the hideous figure in her palm, and then gave up and cursed anyway. “What the _fuck_ is that thing?!”

“Is that a _voodoo doll_?!” Nona cried, holding her hands over her mouth.

“No!” Akane clutched the grotesque doll to her chest, running a reverent thumb over its soulless black eyes and stitched lips. “Not anymore. Her name is June.”

“God, no fuckin’ _wonder_ we got kidnapped for this shitshow and you got put on the wrong boat,” Aoi groaned, holding his head in his hands. “You can’t just wander around carryin’ fuckin’— _cursed objects_ like this, Akane!”

“Why don’t you put your, ah, _doll_ away, Akane,” Light said with a smirk. “Shall we keep going?”

Akane gave the dark corridor behind them an anxious stare as she absently stuffed June back into her pocket. “Seven was about to say something,” she murmured. “He said he remembered… he was about to…”

“Akane, please, listen to me.” Light lifted his head towards everyone else in the group, as well. “I didn’t want to say this because I knew it would make you all nervous, but while we were in the last puzzle room, I heard the clock from the central staircase. I heard it chime five times.”

Nona’s hand came down hard on Aoi’s shoulder when the force of her shudder made her lose her balance. He was perhaps too quick and too eager to wrap his arms around her to keep her securely upright.

“I’d guess that it’s about 5:10 or 5:15 by now,” Light said. “Do you understand? We may only have forty-five minutes left before this boat sinks, and we don’t know how close we are to the exit. We need to hurry.”

Nona was walking much faster than she had been before. Aoi did not chide her this time. Only after another minute did his racing mind slow down enough to ask, “Did… did Claire say ‘what’ earlier? Like… in Japanese?”

“Oh, yeah,” Nona panted. “Nobu and I taught her that one. She likes it.”

Claire scrambled in front of Aoi and held out her palm, tapping it with a finger that she then pointed over her shoulder at the locked door ahead. Aoi fished into his pocket for the Neptune key, handing it to her with a grumbled, “<I speak English. You know this.>”

“<Mum says cats learn tricks from hand motions better’n from words,>” Claire replied as she raced to the door. Aoi did not understand her, but he had heard <cats> again, and Light was snickering behind him, so that was enough to make him give a frustrated growl.

Claire could barely shove the door open when she threw her whole weight against it. When the light from the next room spilled across her face, she glowed too with an inner spark.

“Ren!”

Every high-strung muscle in Ren’s body relaxed at the sound of Claire calling her name, and at the sight of her huge smile in the doorway. She fell into a crouch with open arms. When Claire barreled into her, she scooped the little girl up and spun her around. All four kids from the other number [9] door cut themselves off in the middle of sentences to circle around Claire.

“How come she likes you best?!” Nobu whined with a smile, grabbing her hand and giving it a squeeze when Ren came to a stop.

“Oh my God, I think I’m the only name she knows,” Ren exhaled. Claire’s weight in her arms was the only thing keeping her hands from shaking with excitement; as soon as she set her down, she could not keep still.

Hideyoshi snapped his head up to the Neptune door when it slammed shut behind her. “But—but where are—where are—?”

He could not get the words out of his mouth before the door swung open again, and Light was propping it open for Akane, Aoi, and Nona. “Hey,” Aoi exhaled, staring at each of them with wide eyes. “You guys alright?”

“Aoi. Nona. Akane. Light—you know Light, right?” Ren squatted behind Claire, turning her and pointing towards each face as she slowly spoke their names. “Hideyoshi. Yuuki. N… Nobu?”

After waiting for over an hour in solitude in the hallway, the four kids had come back to these huge doors once Hideyoshi noticed that the light on the LED had changed from red to green. Claire interrupted them just before they were about to give the red lever beside the doors another try. When Ren pointed at Nobu, his bandaged fingers were curled around the lever.

The doors gave a grinding noise as they began to slowly shift aside. Nobu gaped into the sliver of an opening into the next room, dumbfounded. He raised his hand to point inside before the words finally burst from his lips.

“There it is!” he screamed. “Over there! It’s the [9] door!”

With those magic words spoken aloud, the kids were funneling through the barely-opened doors to the next room with all of the urgency in the world. It did not fully occur to them that they had already passed through the [9] doors; eight hours in this hellish game had conditioned them to seek the door that carried a [9] above all else, like an instinct. Yuuki shoved herself through the door behind Ren, then shouted over her shoulder, “Hurry! Over here!”

Aoi reached for Nona, but his hand brushed against his sister’s as she slunk under Nona’s arm, standing at the perfect height to be her support. “Okay,” she called after Yuuki, “we’re coming!”

She was fully present for the first time in hours.

Aoi startled back into motion when Light’s shadow crossed into his peripheral vision. He gave Light a gentle nudge with his arm and a quiet, “You good?”

Light gave a soft smile and dropped a hand on Aoi’s shoulder to follow him through the door. The smile faded, however, once he and Aoi had crossed the threshold into the room. He frowned over his shoulder, to where he thought he had heard a soft, electronic chirp.

Even if his hearing were as good as Light’s, Aoi would not have heard the sound. His attention was snagged on the plaque above the door, tracing over the shapes of the Roman letters, trying to sound them out in his head as he walked.

The huge [9] felt eerily like a lure once they were all inside. Aoi started to describe the scene before Light cut him off with a wave of his hand and a muttered, “My sister sees it.”

_She spun around the barren, dusty room, looking for something she knew was missing. There were the two open doors they had just come through, and on the opposite side of the room was another big door with a beckoning [9]._

_Once they were all inside, there was no one thinking about anything other than the fact that there was only one door._

“Wh—what’re we gonna do?!” Hideyoshi cried, holding his hands to his scalp.

Yuuki turned back to Aoi in desperation, shouting, “There aren’t any other doors?!”

And then her face went white, as the other children heard a chorus of rumbling behind them. They spun around just in time to catch a final glimpse of the hallway behind them before they were sealed inside. Before they could react, even if just to scream, the deafening, robotic sound of a woman speaking English through the speakers echoed in the cavernous room.

“< _Warning. Warning. Emergency incineration command has been acknowledged. Automatic incineration will take place in [18] minutes. Please evacuate the incinerator immediately._ >”

Aoi tried to catch more words when the woman repeated her line, but Claire drowned her out with a deafening shriek of “ _What?!_ ”

Yuuki was already terrified; Claire had only made it worse. “ _What’s happening?!_ ” she screamed, holding her face in her hands.

Akane turned to Light with horror in her eyes. “What did that thing say?!”

“That didn’t sound good,” Nona said weakly.

Light did not answer Akane’s question, and now she was staring at Aoi. He did not dare to look at either of them. There was a word he recognized in that speech, and he did not know why he knew it, maybe from the name of an attack in a cartoon or a video game from when he was a kid, but he looked up at the blackened ceiling sloping up like a chimney, and his mind sounded out those letters from above the door in a different way, and he knew.

He swallowed so hard he could hear it. “I think,” he uttered, “it means this room is gonna _burn_.”

“Burn?!” Nobu yelped.

Aoi looked back in vain at the closed doors behind them. “The plaque on the door says <incinerator>,” he said. “And that voice said the <incineration> is about to start… and <incinerate> means… to burn…”

The room was too quiet around his words. He glanced up to see whether anyone was even there, or if he had ended up alone in this room.

He had never seen her so terrified, so utterly broken. Hers was the first shriek, a desperate, “ _No!_ ” that tore down the floodgates.

Nona collapsed to her knees, maybe from her injury, maybe from the weight of her terror. She threw her head towards the high ceiling and screamed, “ _Help me!_ ” like anyone was listening, or cared.

Every eye was wide open and brimming with tears. Throats went raw with screams. Yuuki started pounding on one of the entrance doors, and Ren started prying at the other, and Hideyoshi stared at the number [9] door, at the other children, at the door, at the other children, as if when he turned around one of those times he would suddenly have another door or fewer kids or something that would make this possible.

The last time they had fallen apart into such a broken mess was in the hospital room. With a few gentle words and the gift of the clovers in his pocket, Light had bought them back together, more determined than ever. Any time they started to squabble, Light had an idea, a reason, a compromise. Aoi shoved his hand into his pocket, desperate to feel the reassurance of those cool, soft leaves on his fingertips, and he turned to Light.

The boy was a statue of white stone, wide-eyed and unmoving but for the sheen of tears growing thicker on his lashes.

“Light,” Aoi said, shoving against him with both hands. “Light, c’mon, c’mon, what do we do. _Light_.”

_She did not know the way to translate the word <incinerate>. She stared helplessly at Holly, at Reed, at Violet, and then back at Kenshin, who had been the one to ask her if she could understand what the woman on the speaker had just said._

_It was Violet who pointed solemnly up at the dark chimney above them and said, “Fire.”_

“We—we send five people through, right, Light?” Aoi’s throat was throbbing. “We send f-five of us through, and—we’ll c-communicate w-with—me and Akane, we’ll…”

“<Eighteen minutes,>” Light whispered. “Eighteen minutes. Seventeen now—or sixteen—Aoi, we don’t have _time_.”

“Then what do we _do_?!” Aoi yelled.

Light flinched at the sound of his raised voice and snapped his hands to his ears. Something was shaking, either his head or his hands or maybe his whole body, but his hands and his ears weren’t staying aligned.

Aoi heard the familiar background utterance of his anxious mind, a desperate and resigned _I want to die_ , and he let it keep looping. He hoped it would last for the next sixteen and a half minutes.

Despite the cries echoing through the chamber, the creak and the slam of the metal vent cover cut through all of the terrible noise. The children staggered back and gasped at the sound alone. They took another step back when they saw a giant’s broad face peering down at them.

He had a rough look about him, like he came from that separate class of citizen that waged secret wars across city streets, but after a closer look at his eyes, his largeness seemed softer, warmer. Though the kids had become wary of any adult they found in this awful place, the man scooting forward in the vent like a clown slinking from car startled them more than he scared them. He was like a wandering black bear that had strolled its unwitting way into a neighborhood: a terrifying sight, and perhaps a threat if angered, but mostly a gentle, if awkward, creature.

He held up his hands, and the orange sleeves of his blazer were covered in dirt and dust. “Don’t worry, kids!” he called out in a booming baritone. “I’m not your enemy! I’m one’a the good guys!”

Aoi was almost willing to trust him until his last presumptuous line. He lunged forward and shouted, “Who the hell are you?!”

The giant gave a proud, crooked smile with messy teeth. “I’m a detective,” he said. “I’m here to rescue you.”

The gasps that the kids had taken in at the sight him now fell back out of their lungs as sighs of relief. Nobu turned around to Hideyoshi, then to Yuuki and Ren, with the biggest, proudest, happiest grin of his life on his face.

“How’re you gonna help us?” Aoi snapped, still unconvinced.

The detective looked a bit dumbfounded as he glanced around the incinerator. “Where’s the exit?” he asked.

“There _isn’t_ one,” Aoi said through gritted teeth. “The doors we came through won’t open, and the door over there—”

He followed his own finger to the number [9] door, at the RED beside it, at the bracelet on the wrist he was pointing with, and realized just how much of this mess he had started to normalize and would have to explain.

“Anyway, there’s no point! We can’t all get out of here!” His chest heaved with a breath; they were getting harder to come by again. “If we don’t get out of here, we’re gonna be _burned_ to death!”

The man in the vent went pale. “Burned to death?” he repeated.

“Can’t you hear it?!” Aoi yelled. “That voice said the _incinerator’s_ gonna start up soon!”

She came back as if on cue. Claire whimpered a little, and the whole group shuddered, even the grown man, at the sound of her metallic voice.

“< _Automatic incineration will take place in [15] minutes._ >”

“Wait right there!” The man barely waited for the announcement to finish before he started barking orders. “I’m gonna be right back!”

“What?!” Claire shouted, pointing at him as soon as he turned his back and tossing her head around the room to find someone who would explain this all to her. Unfortunately for her, no one else knew what he was up to, either.

“Wh-where is he going?!” Nona asked.

“Are you just gonna _leave_ us here?!” Yuuki screamed.

He paused in the middle of turning around with a bit of a grimace, but then he put on that crooked smile again, and there was something warm in it. “Don’t worry, alright?” he said. “I’ll be back, I promise. So just stay calm, and wait right there. Got it?”

He did not wait for them to agree before shuffling back the way he came. As soon as he was gone, a hand knocked into Aoi’s back. Between heavy breaths, Light uttered, “How did he get in here. Where did he come from.”

“There’s some kinda vent up in the wall—it’s, I dunno, ten meters up, it’s not—we can’t—”

“How did a _detective_ ,” Light snarled, “get onto a sinking _cruise liner_ , in the middle of the _ocean_ , and end up in an _air vent_.”

Aoi hissed out a long breath. “Fuck. God. Yeah, okay.” He clenched his hair in his fists. “ _Fuck_. He’s a fake, ain’t he. _Fuck!_ ”

“Why is he here,” Light muttered, running his fingers along his scalp. “Why is he _here_ and no one is _there_. What’s the game.”

“Wait, no one is _where_?” Aoi demanded. “Where’s there supposed to—?”

“Building Q. No one has shown up in Building Q.” His head snapped up, eyes wide open. “Even if he _could_  be trusted, there’s no one in Building Q. We still have to solve the puzzle to escape this room.”

“What puzzle?” Aoi shot back, throwing out his arms at the empty space around them. “There’s nothing _here_! It’s—what’s in Building Q, anything?! Nona, what’s in—”

“It’s the same.” Nona was curled up on the ground, hugging her injured leg to her chest and trying not to cry anymore. “It’s the same, it’s all the same. There’s… there’s _nothing_ …”

“Open the case with the RED,” Light ordered. “We’re going to send five of us out now.”

Nobu looked as though he had been punched in the face again. “What?!” he shouted. “Light, why?!”

Light’s right hand clenched into a fist. “Because this is the only thing we _can_ do.”

With trembling fingers, Hideyoshi wrenched open the door to the glass panel encasing the RED. Once he had freed it, he gave it a long stare, not daring to press his left palm to the empty scanner. His right fingertip traced along the word [VACANT] as he wondered whether there was space enough for four more asterisks on this screen, whether it would not switch to that red [ENGAGED] after a party of four or five went through, whether there was anything different about this device than the ten others they had already seen that night.

Aoi caught a flash of movement in the lower corners of his eyes. He yanked Light back with him when he saw a panel on the floor opening up near their feet. The rest of the kids took much more than just those couple of cautionary steps back; they scattered towards the edges of the room, terrified of what might emerge.

What emerged was an old computer monitor, with eclectic controls and archaic stylings. As soon as the rumbling and whining of the rising platform in the floor came to a halt, leaving only the ring of those noises hanging in the air, they all raced inwards to see the device. The screen flickered with a faintly green glow.

“It’s just blank, white,” Aoi explained to Light, wiggling the joystick in the cross-shaped controller to no avail. “There’s a… looks like a nine-by-nine grid, all white, kinda separated into groups of three-by-three…”

_Clover fought her way to the front with her elbows and her small stature. The screen was well over her head, but she could see enough. It had been a number of years since she had seen this pattern. Light used to scribble out their solutions like it was a nervous tick rather than a puzzle._

“What’re we supposed to do,” Aoi growled, forcing the joystick harder and slapping his fingers against the lifeless keyboard. “What the _hell_. Nothing’s even _doing_ anything! What the hell is this thing?!”

When Light’s answer was a harsh, “It’s a fucking Sudoku,” Aoi jolted back.

Light’s breaths were heavy, each passing through clenched teeth. His face was waxy and pale. All this time, he had convinced himself that everything would be alright, as long as he was the one in the sinking ship and his precious sister was at least on dry land. Now she had less than fifteen minutes to survive, and the knowledge that could save her was trapped in the mind of a boy who could neither see nor transmit.

_“Let me through!” Ennea cried. “I need to send it to Nona, please! I can show this to them!”_

Nona did not even try moving closer to the computer. The image in her head was strong and steady, moreso than any she had received from Ennea all night, but as soon as she tried to concentrate on the numbers, they began to shift, like staring at a digital clock in a dream.

With all of the other puzzles, what was transferred was raw information. The key item is hidden in this place. The password is as follows. Even in the dark library, the images were no more than vague ideas—a staircase here, a lightbulb there. Hongou’s final gambit required the players to send and receive not only an image, but its interpretation. Not just a grid of numbers, but the complete and perfect knowledge of which numbers and where.

Not just a face, but the exact details and imperfections that made this face different from all of the others.

“What if—what if we solve this to—to reactivate the door?!” Hideyoshi said. “If—if we send five people through n-now—and then—the puzzle will be—and we can—!”

“That’s gotta be it!” Yuuki shouted. “Hideyoshi’s right, that has to be—!”

“Who can see the puzzle?!” Nona called out in a trembling voice. “P-please, wh-who can… who can _help_ me, _please_ …”

Aoi met his sister’s eyes. She gave a slow, solemn nod.

“Alright, let’s do this!” Aoi barked, stepping back to survey the throng of kids. “We’re gonna split up how we did for the last set of doors, okay?! All the best receivers went through the door with me, right, so we’re all gonna stay behind and figure out this puzzle!”

Nona gaped up at Aoi, with a quick look in Akane’s direction. He glanced away from her, to someone who would not needle him with a piercing gaze, but he found that the other children were all staring at him in the same way. He and Hongou had spoken the secret aloud already: he could not receive anything at all on this ship.

“Aoi, I can…”

Ren staggered forward, then glanced at Nobu. She did not have to say a single word before Nobu gave an eager nod.

“I can—I think I can see it, I can try to,” Ren stammered. “If me and Nobu…”

“We’re [2] and [7],” Nobu cut in. “If we swap out with you and Akane…”

The voice came back, and Aoi lost any hope of keeping his cool.

“< _Automatic incineration will take place in [10] minutes._ >”

“Ren, you fucking _fainted_ a couple hours ago,” Aoi shouted over the sound of the speakers. “You’re not—you need to get out of here, now.”

“I’m _fine_!” she shot back, clenching her fists. “I’m fine, I swear to God, I—I’ll be okay. I can… I _think_ I can…”

“You _think_ you can?!” Aoi roared. “Get the hell out of here, Ren. You, Hideyoshi, Yuuki, Nobu, get the _hell_ out of here. _Go_.”

Nobu took another step away from the number [9] door and towards Aoi. “But—!”

“But what?!” Aoi yelled.

Nobu had nothing to say, which was good, because Aoi did not know how he planned to argue with him other than raising his voice louder and louder. He gave another desperate look to Akane. He did not even have to ask his question out loud.

_Are we gonna be okay?_

She nodded, raising her head towards the open vent. “I trust him,” she said firmly.

Aoi pointed to the door and gave the four kids a stiff nod. “Go,” he ordered.

“Wait. Wait just a minute.”

Light’s voice was so much quieter than Aoi’s had become, but that made it all the more arresting. Although Hideyoshi had reluctantly raised his hand towards the RED, and Ren had even started to back away, all of them stopped mid-motion.

“<Claire,>” Light said weakly. “<Go with them.>”

Claire went stiff. No one needed to speak English to know what he had said, just as she did not need to speak Japanese to understand what the original plan was.

“<But I’ve gotta _help_ you!>” she protested. “<Holly’s stayin’ behind, right?! Why do I gotta—?!>”

“<Because I _know_ how she feels right now, >” Light uttered. “<She wants this more than anything, even if she thinks it would be too selfish to ask. I’m asking _for_ her. Go with them, Claire. >”

Claire’s eyes were shimmering with fresh tears. “<Light,>” she whispered. “<You mean… you’re gonna…>”

“Nona.” Light inhaled deeply. “Please tell your sister to make Clover go through the door as well.”

_“No!” Clover shrieked. “Light, I’m staying here! I need to help you!”_

_She did not know how she was hearing his voice and feeling his heart, but all of a sudden, he was right there beside her, and she was starting to realize he had been there all along like this. She could not let him leave her now._

“ _Listen_ to me, Clover!”

Aoi took a step back from him in surprise, and Akane jumped at the sudden change in his voice, but everyone else felt as though they heard both halves of the conversation.

“I _need_ you to get out of here,” he pleaded. “Clover, I’m begging you. I just want you to be safe. _Please_.”

_“What about me?!” Clover wailed. Her nose flared hot, and suddenly tears were dripping down her cheeks. “What about what I want?! I want my brother to come home, Light! I don’t want you to die!”_

“I _won’t_. I swear to you, I’ll come home. I _promise_.”

A tear fell from his eye. His bones seemed bound together with only cheap glue and unravelling thread, stuck at odd angles and threatening to fall apart.

“Go. Hurry.” He nodded in the direction of the door. “The sooner you leave, the more time we’ll have to get out behind you.”

At the sound of Hideyoshi’s bracelet authenticating in the RED, he managed a weak smile.

Though Ren stomped her feet as she retreated, she did so with her arm hooked around Nobu’s. He was helpless to her pull, too shocked to move his feet in any direction other than the one in which she dragged him. With tears streaming down her face, Yuuki snatched up Claire’s hand and yanked her towards the door, too. She managed a blubbered, poorly-pronounced, “<I’m sorry,>” in Claire’s direction when the little one began to cry.

A breath tickled Light’s ear. He felt the warmth of someone behind him.

“Can you take your bracelet off?” Aoi whispered. “Your arm. Can you take it off?”

Light gave a soft, dark laugh. “You _did_ know.”

“I’ll… I’ll hold onto it. I’ll bring it back to you,” he promised. “We’ll use it to scan out of here if we… You—you gotta get out.”

Light shook his head. “I may not be able to see the puzzle,” he said, “but I can still help you.”

“Light, she… she saw you _dying_.”

“Dying via explosions due to the bombs in our stomachs, not by incineration, correct?” Light’s voice cracked from weakness when he tried to spin his usual musicality into his tone. “I think I’d sooner have a brush with death if I tried to cheat the numbered doors.” He turned around to face Aoi and gave the strongest smile he could muster. “I’m staying here.”

Ren pulled the lever on the RED, and the door slowly slid open. She, Claire, Hideyoshi, Nobu, and Yuuki stepped through one by one, looking back in horror, without knowing what to say.

“You can _do_ it!” Nobu screamed at the last second, as the door was sliding closed again. “We’ll see you!”

Aoi tossed a peace sign at the closing gap in the door. As soon as it shut, he watched the display flip from a green set of asterisks to a red [ENGAGED].

“Okay,” he muttered. “Can we actually do this?”

Nona did not wait for him to finish speaking before she started shaking her head.

_Reed moved like he was playing an arcade machine he knew by heart. Within half a minute, he had mastered the joystick under his right hand, and had the number pad on the keyboard memorized under his left. He flicked across the screen like lightning, narrating every single movement, shouting coordinates like “middle right box, upper left square, six”. When she saw Ennea’s widening eyes, Violet smacked her brother’s shoulder and told him to slow down. “I can’t go any slower,” he shouted, dragging the cursor with a hard jerk of the joystick. “We don’t have time.”_

Light snapped his head towards the open air vent. He heard it before anyone else did, and his jaw slowly fell open as the sounds came closer, but soon they were all listening to the pounding coming from the duct.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, guys.”

As soon as he poked his head out of the little door, down came a makeshift rope of torn bedsheets, dangling just a couple of feet above the ground. The other end wrapped around his broad shoulders.

“Alright, just tie that around yourself, okay?!” His face was shining with sweat. “I’ll pull you up one at a time.”

It had been so long since anything had been easy for them that they all just stared in silence for a moment. Then Nona shifted forward, stumbling over her rolled ankle. Aoi shouted a quick, “Right!” and leapt to her side.

“Huh?! Wait a sec!” The detective leaned out of the vent as far as he dared to get a better look around the room. “There were more’a you before! Where’d the rest of you go?!”

“I let them go on ahead!” Aoi shouted back as he led Nona to the wall. “We opened the number [9] door and they left!”

“What?!” His head snapped to the locked gate. “You’re tellin’ me you opened that door?!”

Aoi rolled his eyes. “That’s what I said!”

“Then what the hell are you doing here?!”

He all but shoved Nona against the wall to give her something to lean on while he got ahold of the rope. “We couldn’t go with them!”

“Why not?!”

“Look,” Aoi groaned, “the only people who can go through the numbered door—”

“< _Automatic incineration will take place in [5] minutes._ >”

He flinched at the sound and scrambled to tie a knot around Nona’s body. “Look, that can wait, alright?!” he screamed. “Just get us out of here!”

“R-right!”

As they watched Nona drift up towards the vent, Aoi hugged Akane to his chest, running his hand down her hair and kissing it. The rope was coming back down. Akane was going to be safe. He tied the tightest knot he could, and gave her one last kiss on the forehead, before giving the thumbs-up to the detective. His next breath felt like sunshine breaking through a storm as she ascended.

“I’ll climb up,” Light called when the detective threw the rope back down, and that was like another sudden clap of thunder.

“ _You’ll_ climb up?!” Aoi hissed, jabbing him in the left arm. “Jesus fucking Christ, Light!”

“We’re short on time.” Light waved his right arm around in a circle to wrap the tail of the rope around his wrist, then held it out towards Aoi.

“Are you kidding me?” Aoi shoved his hand back. “If you’re gonna fucking climb, you’re going first. I’ll stay under you, got it?”

Light smirked, but settled his prosthetic hand above his right on the rope. “Ye of little faith,” he said, then his smile softened and he added, “Thank you.”

He was clumsy, but quick. As soon as his first knee cleared the landing, Aoi grabbed hold of the rope and started up after him. He was smiling hard, giddy as he worked out all of his excess energy into wriggling up the flimsy cord, so very ready to escape this mess, until he heard the bang from the other side of the entrance to the incinerator.

“ _Goddammit!_ What’s going on here?! _Why is the room empty?!_ ”

Even when muffled by a thick layer of steel and glass, Aoi knew the sound of that man’s screams.

“Where the hell are those _fucking_ kids?!”

Aoi heard the rumble of the door opening. When he looked down, the ground looked so very, very, very far away, and yet it seemed like Gentarou Hongou had him within arm’s reach. The guttural cry Hongou let out, one so loud it drowned out Aoi’s own terrified scream, was foremost one of fury, but there was something so desperate in the way it trailed off, the same desperation Aoi could see in his eyes when he looked too long.

“ _Hurry!_ ” shouted the detective.

“I _know_!” Aoi shrieked.

“You son of a bitch!” Hongou screamed. “Get _back_ here, you little shit!”

The man in the orange blazer was even bigger up close than he had looked from the ground. As soon as Aoi’s trembling grip on the rope came close enough to his meaty hand, he only blinked, and then he was flying over the man’s shoulder. He could not see in the darkness for another few blinks, but he recognized the feel of Light’s outer jacket against his cheek, and he would know the feel of his sister’s hand squeezing his anywhere.

“Are you alright?” Light asked in a hushed voice.

Aoi realized that that strange background noise was Hongou screaming again. Now that he had noticed it once, he could not help but hear that desperation underneath the rage.

“ _Aoi_ ,” Light demanded.

“Y-yeah, I’m okay,” he exhaled. “Fucker didn’t bring a gun this time, yeah. I’m okay.”

< _Automatic incineration will take place in [1] minute._ >

Aoi seized up and found his footing, though it was only on his hands and knees in the cramped space. “Hey, old man!” he shouted at the detective still arguing with the madman in the incinerator. “What the hell are you doing?! Hurry up!”

The detective tossed a smug salute to the floor before he shut the vent behind him.

“What about your sister?!” Aoi asked as they began to crawl, following the direction of the detective shouting from the rear. “The other—Nona, what about—?!”

“They’re okay!” Nona piped up from the front. “Reed knew how to solve it, they’re okay! They’re opening the door again right now!”

 

* * *

 

“< _Automatic incineration will take place in [30] seconds._ >”

Hongou raised the radio to his lips. “Shut down the Gigantic incinerator,” he growled.

He turned the dial back to Nijisaki’s frequency as soon as he heard the first stuttered word of Kubota’s reply. The entrance doors slid open behind him. He spared them nothing more than a glance before pressing the radio even closer to his mouth.

“Do _not_ let those kids get out of Building Q,” he seethed. “They _cheated_. I _told_ them what would happen if they cheated.”

 

* * *

 

“Then…” With a puzzled frown, the detective pointed weakly at the massive door at the closer end of the hall into which they had inelegantly stumbled. “That’s where we were?”

“Yeah,” Akane said, but she was pointing at the DEAD beside the door to prove it. “Hongou might still be in there. It looks like it’s been shut off, though.”

“Wait, what?!” He did a double take from the door to the little girl beside him. “If he’s still in there—”

Akane took several steps backward. “Yeah, that’s not good!”

The detective gave a groan. “Fine, the other door!” he called, waving them towards the far end of the hall. “Go into the other door! Hurry!”

Nona hurried as fast as she could when she had to wince and limp with every other step. As soon as they shoved open the doors and revealed a spiral staircase that looked like it led upwards and never ended, she stopped dead with a soft moan.

“ _Run!_ ” the detective shouted.

Aoi grabbed Nona’s hand and dragged it over his shoulder. “It’s okay,” he muttered. “We’ll stay with you. We’re not gonna leave you behind. C’mon. It’s okay.”

He heard her weak sniffles turn into sobs as they ran at a pace that was so fast it was painful, yet so slow it was terrifying. At the rear of the group, the detective kept looking over his shoulder to make sure Hongou was not on their tail.

At the rear of the group.

Aoi looked up the stairs, looking for a shadow above him.

“Something’s up,” he panted.

He looked back down behind the detective, now _wanting_ to see someone there.

“Akane’s not catching up to us.”

Light gave a jolt, but the detective just looked perplexed.

“My kid sister,” Aoi said, his eyes darting all around. “The girl with the red necktie.”

He could see nothing, and he could run with this dread in his stomach no longer. He came to a halt, leaning Nona against the railing.

“Hey! _Akane!_ ” he yelled.

There was no answer.

“Maybe we outran her,” he uttered.

“When’d we do that?!” the detective asked.

“Well…” Aoi looked around everywhere for an excuse. “We passed a couple big rooms on the way here. Maybe she… took a rest in one of ’em?”

“No, that’s impossible,” the detective muttered, and Light was giving a grimace like that was the stupidest thing he had heard in his life.

So it was not just the panic talking. Aoi’s gut was right. His sister was in danger.

 

* * *

 

Light felt the gust of air as Aoi blew past him, shouting a frenzied, “Sorry, grandpa, you keep going! I gotta go look for her downstairs!”

“Hey! Kid! Wait!” The detective took a few lumbering steps after him, then bellowed even louder, “Goddammit, I said _wait_!”

Light let out a slow, heavy sigh. He knew Aoi too well now. He knew Aoi was not going to wait for anyone.

“Fuck! I’m goin’ after him!” the detective declared. “You two keep going, alright?! You got it?!”

He knew Aoi too well now.

“Nona, can you walk on your own?” Light asked.

Her eyes went wide. She nodded slowly, warily.

“Alright.” Light turned around to the detective. “I’m going with you.”

 

* * *

 

Aoi was at the bottom of the staircase again, and Akane was still not there. He could not even hope that they had somehow missed each other in passing, because now the detective was thundering down the last flight to catch up with him, and she was not with him either.

“God _dammit_!” His head felt as though it would explode if he did not hold it together with both hands. “Where the _hell_ did she go?!”

As soon as he said it, he got his answer, the worst possible answer. The sound of her voice from the next room over turned his blood so cold that he could not move for a moment.

“ _Help me! Somebody, help me!_ ”

He flew at the door, shrieking, “ _Akane!”_

Gentarou Hongou was gripping her wrist like a lifeline. She was everything he had hoped for, but there was no mistaking that she was only a _thing_ to him, not a _who_. “Come _on_ , goddammit!” he shouted, or maybe begged. “Move!”

“No! I don’t _want_ to!” she screeched. “Let me go! Please, let _go_ of me!”

With all of the rage his young body had been filling up with over the past hours, the past _years_ , until he was teeming with fury, he lunged at the man well over twice his size and screamed his sister’s name. No matter how hopeless he matched against a man like Hongou, Akane had stars in her eyes like she was looking at her hero.

“You came back!” she cried.

Hongou let out a barking laugh of a madman. Just as Aoi was about to reach her, he wrenched her up into the air by the arm, blotting out the stars in her eyes. “You’re too late, idiot!” he screamed with delight.

And the last time Aoi saw his sister, she was dangling from Hongou’s grip, shrieking bloody murder, before she disappeared into the incinerator.

Just as it closed, Aoi rammed helplessly into the door. He gripped its edges and pulled, bending back and breaking his fingernails, screaming and pulling with everything he had. “ _Fuck!_ ” he shouted, pounding his fist against the steel. “It’s no use! The goddamn thing won’t _budge_!”

The detective shoved his weight against the door, too. He pried at it with his bigger, stronger hands. Still nothing moved.

“Akane! _Akane!_ ” Aoi screamed through the door. “Are you okay?!”

Her reply was faint and muffled, but the sound of her voice was the only thing keeping Aoi alive. “ _Help me!_ ” she cried. “What should I do?! I—I think I’m trapped in here!”

“Where’s Hongou?!” Aoi demanded.

“He went out the other door!”

“Wh— _what?!_ ”

A microsecond before she started speaking, Aoi felt he knew exactly what was about to happen. The very first syllable of the announcement made his stomach drop.

“< _Warning. Warning. Emergency incineration command has been acknowledged. Automatic incineration will take place in [18] minutes. Please evacuate the incinerator immediately. Repeat…_ >”

“Are you fucking kidding me,” uttered the detective. “It’s the same damn thing.”

For a moment, Aoi could not hear anything. There were the same voices again, the ones chanting, _I want to die, I want to die, I want to die_ , drowning out everything else, gradually morphing into _I want to die instead of her, please, God, I want to die instead of her_.

“Are you there?!”

Aoi jerked his head up. “Yeah, we’re here!” he called through a hoarse throat. “Just hang on, alright?! We’re gonna figure out a way to save you!”

“<Automatic incineration will take place in [17] minutes.>”

“ _Please!_ Please help me!” Akane wailed. “I’m really, really scared! I don’t want to die! Please, I don’t want to die! I don’t want to _die_!”

_I want to die, I want to die, I want to die._

“It’s gonna be alright! I’ll figure something out, I promise!” Aoi screamed. “I _promise_ , okay?! You hear me?! _I promise!_ ”

_Do you really want to make this promise?_

That was not Aoi’s voice.

 

* * *

 

“ _Bracelet [5] is in the incinerator in Building Q. Seventeen minutes… forty-three seconds. Final puzzle is reset. He’s working on it now._ ”

Hongou hardly heard Nijisaki’s message, but Nijisaki had grown accustomed to his radio silence as the night wore on.

His cheeks ached from the giddy smile he could not stop wearing. He dared not blink his bloodshot eyes as he peered through the small window into the incinerator at the little girl standing before the computer. He did not want to miss a single moment.

When she stepped away from the computer, he could not control his fist before it banged into the door.

“Hey!” he shouted. “What are you doing?!”

She gave a start, the little thing, and when she turned towards him, he saw a glint of light flashing in the tears on her cheeks. She was terrified. Everything was going according to plan.

“Aww, don’t know what to do?” he cooed. “It’s simple, really, but I suppose I might as well tell you. Just solve the puzzle on that machine.”

He saw her eyes get wider, and her face whiter. A wheezing, frenzied laugh burst from his mouth, and went on and on. The greatest fear, and the greatest puzzle. Everything was perfect.

He would not have understood her had he not been watching her closely enough to read her lips. Her voice was so pitifully small even when she screamed, and she was muffled by impenetrable walls of iron and steel.

“You’re a terrible person! I _hate_ you!”

Nijisaki and Kubota insisted on children, from evidence of their increased capacity resonance in past research, and because they were much more easily emotionally swayed. Hongou understood and accepted these conditions, but children could be so terribly insufferable sometimes.

“Oh, my,” he chuckled, finally coming down from his laughter. “How could you call a gentleman such as myself a terrible person? That’s not very nice.”

Her steps were short, though she stomped her feet, as she stormed closer to his door, and further from the computer.

“I’m _quite_ fair!” he insisted, pounding on the door again. “I don’t use tricks or play dirty. You see? I’ve even left you a way out.”

Her anger left her face when she heard him and froze in her stride. “A… a way out?” she repeated.

“Didn’t you hear me?!” He jabbed his finger against the glass, pointing towards the computer. “All you have to do is _solve that puzzle_. Do that, and you can stop the incinerator!”

And she could change his life.

“What’s the _point_ of stopping it?! You’ll only capture me and make me do this all _again_!” She doubled over with the effort it took to shout every time she finished a sentence. “I’m not going to listen to you! If you’re going to throw me back in here, I might as well just die _now_!”

“My goodness…”

Hongou was dizzy with the thought for a moment. Again and again, throwing her into the incinerator, forcing her to complete the puzzle to save her life, studying every movement, monitoring every aspect of her body and her brother’s in Building Q, until they decoded the mystery of morphic resonance.

But she was right. She would lose motivation if she learned that there was no escape. They only had one chance.

“Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve said?” His fingers curled around the edges of the window. “I told you, I’m a fair man.”

She waited, silent, but for maybe a small noise of curiosity. While he had her fleeting attention, she needed to hear what he needed from her.

“If you solve the puzzle,” he enunciated, “the verification function of the RED will in turn activate.”

He paused after he spoke to let the instructions settle into her little head. He could not remember if he had called the REDs by name to these children, but that was information that they were supposed to receive from their siblings. In Building Q, they had heard a prerecorded speech containing all of the necessary detail: the function of the RED and the DEAD, the name of their present location, and even instructions to use the morphogenetic field to save their siblings’ lives.

“If this experiment is to deliver valid results, there must be a chance of success,” he said. “If you succeed, you _will_ escape.”

When she turned towards the final [9] gate, that giddy grin came creeping up onto his face again.

“Ah, so you do remember.” He knocked against the door to get her attention again. “Right now, there are two numbers in the RED. The first is [1], and the second is [3]. Say…”

He could never remember names, and even when he could, they were just a jumbled bag of sounds that had no faces attached. He had written down their names and bracelet numbers and details when he watched the children from the captain’s quarters, but as soon as the notes were out of sight, the names were out of mind.

One of those boys had called her Akane.

“Akane,” he said.

She whipped her head towards him. Akane was her name.

“What’s your number?” he asked, sneering.

After only a split second to process the math, she bolted. His smile fell into a glower when he realized that she was not going to the computer, but directly to the RED.

“You really aren’t one for listening, are you,” he growled. “I already told you, didn’t I? Once you _solve_ the puzzle, the verification function of the RED will activate. In other words, if you haven’t solved the puzzle…”

She pressed her hand to the RED for a fourth time, slow and futile.

“You can’t enter your number!” he shouted. “What kind of a fool _are_ you?!”

With the elbow of his trenchcoat, he wiped the glass clear of the spit that had flown from his mouth. The girl was still standing uselessly by the RED.

“Why?” she said, barely audible. “Why are you doing this?”

He remembered this feeling from the screening sessions. One of the children he once had for the ganzfeld experiments, a subject from the earlier days if he recalled, had nosed into his motives just like this, presuming he wanted what his partners wanted—fame, fortune, power, and other such petty goals.

“You could never understand,” he scoffed. “You don’t know what it’s like to spend every day surrounded by… _monkeys_.”

He glared into her face. There was brown hair, a pinkish sweater, a red necktie. Those things were all different. But her face was just another face.

“Now start the experiment!” he barked. “Solve the puzzle!”

At the sound of his voice, she lurched forward, almost automatically. Kubota said Hongou had been reckless to interrupt the experiment bearing arms, but Hongou was going to gloat about this exact moment when they were all sipping brandy and playing the tapes later, soon, so soon. He had scheduled a review for twelve hours after the conclusion of the experiment to let them all rest for the first time in twenty-four hours—as for Hongou, admittedly, he was on hour forty-six without sleep now—but he was so high with the rush of everything going according to plan that he wanted to start the review immediately, to see for himself the power of the fields from every angle, to learn what made it work, and how, and why, and how to bridge himself into that collective unconscious.

“I can’t!” she cried. “I don’t know how!”

“Of _course_ you don’t!” he screamed. “Isn’t that the point?! You understand, don’t you?!”

The eyes were big now. The cheeks were wet with tears. The skin was pale. He could read this emotion, but he wanted to know more. He wanted everything.

“Access the morphogenetic field and _find the solution_!”

“I _can’t_!” she shrieked again.

That was not an option.

“Then you’ll _die_!” he roared. “ _You’ll burn alive!_ ”

Even through the glass, from so far away, he could see her quaking where she stood. And he laughed with mad glee, as though the power he had sought was already at his fingertips.

Perhaps this is the moment he should have realized it was never about faces. Other people saw faces, so he thought it was only fair that he see faces, too. He wanted access to the morphogenetic field, in and of itself, for the same reason: other people had this power, so he wanted it, too.

“It’s going to be quite hot in there in a few minutes!” he taunted. “I imagine it will be very painful!”

He felt giddy as he laughed, because what he really wanted all along was power.

 

* * *

 

They had scoured every inch of the hallway. They rammed into the door again and again, pried at every piece they could get ahold of, all to no avail.

“< _Automatic incineration will take place in [10] minutes._ >”

When Light came into focus in Aoi’s twisted, blurry vision, when Aoi finally realized that Light had come back downstairs for Akane, too, the tears he was fighting to keep in his eyes started to spill, and he could not say why. He could barely say anything at all. He could not even hear anyone else anymore, not with all of the voices running through his head.

_Aoi. Please, you have to tell me._

He did not know the answer to the puzzle inside the incinerator. He had always been fighting and faking his way through life, scraping by to keep her safe, and this was when it was all finally going to fall through, when she was going to learn he was a worthless little boy who knew nothing and could not save anyone.

_Would you do anything to save me?_

With his face pressed against the wrong side of the number [9] door and his fingernails digging into a groove in the steel, he whispered, “Anything.”

_Then listen to me. I’m so sorry, Aoi. I love you so much._


	17. Morphogenetic Sorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: death & suicidal ideation

“< _Incineration will begin in [10] seconds._ >”

I paid the radio no mind when I heard Nijisaki screaming at me to shut it down. If I did not follow through with my threats, then the element of fear would be lost. And a small, dark part of me, a part growing larger as the time whittled down and all that this stupid girl did was cry, wanted to punish her for failing.

_[9]_

She reached out to me, right before she died. Maybe she reached out to everyone, and I’m just the only one who could hear her. I wish I’d been able to listen to what she had to say. But the next thing I remember, I was waking up on a lifeboat, and she was missing, and no one could understand me when I asked where she was.

_[8]_

I was crying from the pain in my ankle and from some kind of survivor’s guilt when I reached the top of the staircase. I watched their faces light up when I threw open the door, then immediately fall when they saw I was alone.

_[7]_

“It’s gonna be okay, I _know_ it is!” I was curling both hands into fists, no matter how much my right one hurt. “That detective guy’s gonna get them out! He _promised_!”

_[6]_

The ship gave a lurch, and then everything felt like it was happening in double-time. I think I screamed. Nona said something about the clock from the central staircase and how she thought it might already be six o’clock. There were three—no, _four_ people still left inside the ship, but our time limit was up.

_[5]_

They said I was supposed to be a universal transmitter. They said I could send information into the minds of anyone with the capacity for morphic resonance, or maybe the minds of anyone at all. It all felt so meaningless now. I couldn’t get her name off of my lips as I slumped into a worthless heap underneath the DEAD outside of the incinerator doors, clutching the fistful of bracelets that Nijisaki had left behind. Her name, and “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

_[4]_

Reed didn’t cry. He just didn’t. He didn’t even tear up when he had little frustrated fits, or when he got hurt, or when they put the electrodes on his head to stimulate his amygdala and kick his panic response into overdrive during the resonance experiments. He was always in control of the situation at hand, and of his own emotions. But when I watched him come out of the incinerator the second time, he was bawling.

_[3]_

My cheeks were stinging from the wind, and goosebumps prickled over my bare shins. I think my glasses frosted over a little bit when we first came outside and saw the black clouds above an inky sea. I was so relieved to feel that rush of fresh air at first, no matter how frigid it was, no matter how boundless the ocean around us. I thought the novelty would wear off in time. The longer we watched the door behind us, waiting for Light, Aoi, and Akane to return, the more grateful I was to be freezing cold, because at least I was still alive.

_[2]_

They still hadn’t come back by the time Hideyoshi and I got the lifeboat ready. I had this sickening feeling that Aoi had saved my life when he told me and Nobu to leave through the number [9] door instead of taking his place, but for a price I wasn’t sure I was willing to pay.

_[1]_

It had been so long since I resented being blind, but now those feelings came back stronger than I had ever known before as I listened to Akane’s final seconds waste away. I was so helpless, so useless.

_[0]_

From the other side of the door, I heard Aoi screaming my name. I knew he just wanted to hear my voice, and it was so good to hear his as everything was about to end, but I couldn’t answer, not when the lights in the incinerator turned red, and those nozzles spewed gas that sparked orange all around me. I knew from the moment I was shut in here that I would never leave this place, that I was doomed to die here, the infamous, sole victim of the first Nonary Game.

Unless.

“< _All gates are locked down. Beginning incineration._ >”

But it was too late for me this time.

 

* * *

 

A wave of heat with the putrid smell of sulfur wafted out of the door as it slid open.

There was something strange happening in Aoi’s head, some glitch of object permanence, that prevented him from grasping what had happened. He had watched his sister enter this room, and then the door shut, and now the door was open, and his sister was no longer inside, but she had to be _somewhere_. That was the half-thought that got him to stumble into the incinerator, scanning the room for her, even when he knew in his heavy, sickened gut that his sister was not here. She was not anywhere.

It all came crashing down on him when his eyes fell to the center of the floor. Though it was blurry through his tears, he knew what it was, _who_ it was, and his hands plunged into the hot cinders that had once been life, love, light.

She was _nothing_. She was the smoke in the air he was breathing. She was only memories and photographs now.

She was the dust falling from his hands when someone wound an arm around his chest and hauled him to his feet.

“Aoi, we have to go,” Light said, his voice hoarse. “Aoi. _Aoi_.”

One of the far doors had opened, spilling in fluorescent light around the silhouette of a devil disguised as a man. His shoulders drooped, his hands hung by his sides, and his face was frozen in the shape of disbelief.

Aoi screamed. Maybe he had been screaming the whole time. There were no words, just pure vitriol, mixed with the deepest anguish his heart would ever know.

Even with the threat of Gentarou Hongou in the doorway, the detective could only stand and stare in shock at the charred remains of a twelve-year-old girl lying in the center of an incinerator maintained explicitly to trap and burn people alive, even children. Only Light still had his wits about him. He knew Hongou’s true face already, knew the wickedness he possessed and the evil he could and would commit. Though his heart was breaking into a million pieces for the little girl he had come to love over the course of these nine hours, this ending did not come as a great surprise.

He crossed both arms across Aoi’s chest and tugged. He was a head taller, and one of his arms was boned with infallible titanium, and Aoi was only halfway inside his own weak, awful, little body anyway. Aoi was as helpless to the pull as he would have been if it were the detective dragging him out.

When the air got cooler and he realized he was on the other side of the number [9] door, outside of the incinerator again, he reached back with a pitiful yelp. He did not know what he was reaching for. For his sister. For another chance. For Hongou’s fucking neck.

He had his sister in his hands already. She was the grey on his palms and fingertips.

Akane Kurashiki was dead.

 

* * *

 

He could not remember things clearly after that.

He knew he went up the stairs, because he ended up on the deck of the Gigantic with everyone else, and he had this vague memory of Light’s face that had to have come from the stairwell, where Light was a few feet up, holding out an arm behind him for Aoi, and when he looked back, his cheeks were dripping with tears. Aoi must have been the one who yelled, “Why are you crying. Why the _fuck_ are you crying,” while Light said nothing, just gritted his teeth and kept moving, kept pulling, kept crying.

It was when he heard the other kids cheering that he came plummeting back down to earth, and his whole body felt like it hit the ground when his mind did. Yuuki and Hideyoshi were talking over each other about a lifeboat, and that kid Ren was getting in his face about something with Claire, and then Nona looked around and asked where Akane was, and Aoi almost fell to his knees.

That question echoed across their little mouths, “Where’s Akane?” getting quieter and quieter until the only sound was the ocean waves slapping against the side of the tilting boat. And then, with his voice breaking with tears, Nobu screamed it: “ _Where’s Akane?!_ ”

“ _Alright!_ ” the detective roared, cutting off the terrified yelling before it could start. “Everyone get in the lifeboat, _now_!”

His booming voice terrified them into agonized silence and reluctant obedience. What scared them even more, what made them hold back whimpers and stifle sobs, was the sight of Aoi’s face, when they looked to him next, wondering how he could agree with leaving Akane behind, and realizing with horror that he no longer had a choice. They did not know what had happened to her, but their minds, twisted by nine hours of trauma, were working out a million awful possibilities that made them too afraid to ask for the truth.

The Gigantic gave a slow, sickening lean towards the stern. Shaking from the cold and from the tears rising to their eyes, the children scrambled to the lifeboat hanging over the edge of the ship. Ren lifted Claire’s unconscious body into the vessel first, then held out her hands to help the others climb overboard. She squeezed each hand she was given.

“Where’re you going?!” Nobu shouted.

The detective was facing the descending staircase, about to shut the door behind him. Over his shoulder, he barked back, “Don’t worry about me! I gotta go find the other—the other _seven_! Any o’ you know where the other seven kids are?!”

“Seven?” Light repeated.

“Yeah, there’s sixte—” The detective cut himself off with a choked sort of grunt and pressed his hand to his head for a half-second before he could go on. “There’s fifteen missing kids I’m lookin’ for.” He dropped his voice lower so that only Light and Aoi could hear him. “Sixteen in the police report. Fifteen now.”

All of Aoi’s limbs went numb. His helpless weight fell against Light, who snapped his hands up to Aoi’s shoulders to steady him.

“It sh-shou—it should have been eighteen,” Light protested. “ _Eighteen_ were kidnapped. Nine were here. The other nine are in another location.”

“Then… what, two of ’em weren’t reported missing?”

Light’s hand tensed up suddenly, before his grip on Aoi’s shoulder grew even tighter.

“You’re sayin’ you’re  _sure_ there’s… there’s nobody left on this ship,” the detective said to Light.

“Yes. Absolutely,” Light stated. His voice wavered.

The detective rocked Light’s shoulder with a pat from his large hand. “Thanks,” he grunted. “Good kid.”

Aoi stumbled forward when Light pulled him, until he was standing at the edge of the deck, gazing over the railing, past the lifeboat, down to the murky waters below. Ren guided Light into the little boat, and then they were both holding out hands to Aoi.

It all suddenly struck him that life was just going to go on from here. His sister was dead, gone forever, evaporated into thick air, but he was still going. He was going to escape this place alive even if she never would.

He took a step back from those outstretched hands, clean hands, hands without the soot and ash of a human life settling into the creases of their palms. He stayed close to the railing, staring with sick desire at the ocean below, wondering how much it would hurt to slam into the icy surface of the water, whether it would kill him on impact, or whether he would have to drown first.

“ _Aoi_ ,” Light called.

He was leaning over the edge of the lifeboat, arms out, desperate. Aoi’s breath shook when he tried to draw it in, and if he did not realize he was crying from that, he figured it out when his voice was nothing but cracks and whispers.

“I don’t wanna go,” he whimpered. “I… I wanna _die_.”

Those voices in his head chanting, _I want to die, I want to die, I want to die_ , had never been so compelling before. He was leaning forward. His weight was more over the railing than behind it.

The wooden lifeboat banged against the side of the ship when Light leapt from it. He grabbed Aoi in two blind fistfuls of fabric and yanked backwards.

“I’m not going to let you die,” he said.

The detective had to pick Aoi up to get him in the lifeboat in the end. He told Light not to let go of the boy for a second. With a nod, Light snaked an arm around Aoi’s shoulders, clutching him desperately close. He was warm from shaking so much.

The boat began to drift downward as soon as the detective settled his massive weight near the bow. Hideyoshi was too small to hold the cables himself, but he told the detective and the bigger kids how to operate them to lower the lifeboat into the water.

“Alright, we got four paddles on here,” said the detective, wriggling out of his sport coat. “I’ll take two. Need a couple’a you older boys to take the other two on the other end, alright?! We gotta get away from this ship ’fore it goes under!”

Light gave a small shudder. His weight kept shifting—up to rise, then back towards Aoi, then up, then back—until the gentle weight and warmth of the orange blazer fell onto his and Aoi’s shoulders.

“You sit tight, kid,” the detective told Light. “You got one job right now, and that’s makin’ sure this one gets home safe.”

Aoi’s ears snagged on the word _home_ for a while, in a sort of blank haze at first.

Nobu had taken one oar. Wearing a grimace to keep back the tears, Ren shoved Claire into Yuuki’s arms, and stormed off to Nobu’s other side. She knew she was one of the “older boys” the detective was talking about.

Aoi thought about the place he was supposed to call home, about that little apartment with two tiny bedrooms he had only gotten for _her_ , to make _her_ happy. Everything was for her, every meal cooked, every hour worked, every penny pinched.

He did not know what home was without her.

“Aoi, come home with me.”

Light’s whole body was trembling. A new tear dripped down his already wet cheeks when he turned to Aoi with desperation. This was not an offer. It was a plea.

“No one reported you missing.” His voice was quiet, but it was picking up in speed and pitch as he went on. “You called it _your_ apartment. You cooked—back in the kitchen, with the steak, and you knew it was bad just by the smell. You knew enough first-aid to help Nobu and Nona.”

Every word was piercing directly into Aoi’s guarded soul, and prying him open. He leaned away as Light leaned closer.

“You lived alone, didn’t you?” Light whispered. “You don’t have any family left.”

It was pity in his face, and there was nothing Aoi wanted less than pity. He shoved against Light with both hands clenched into fists, touching with just his knuckles, to keep the precious traces of his sister from leaving his palms.

“Aoi, _please_ , I know you don’t want help,” Light said. “We’re… we’re the same way, remember? I _know_. But this is different. This isn’t fair.”

He pressed his right palm to Aoi’s shoulder, trailed down his arm, and settled into his hand. The ashes smeared between their hands when he squeezed.

“Please don’t go back there. I… I don’t want you to be alone like this,” he begged. “Come home with me. I… It’s not… We’ll take care of you, Aoi. I’ll take care of you. I don’t want you to be alone.”

In the splinters of Aoi’s shattering heart, something warm broke free. For the little while that the warmth lasted, he saw a way forward. He saw himself going on in this life.

Then hatred, the chill of self-loathing, took it all away. To move on so easily felt like a betrayal.

“I don’t want to,” he mumbled.

Light’s face fell. “Please,” he whispered. “She… Aoi, she would _want_ you to…”

“I just want her back.”

His face broke. A tear fell from his other eye as he choked back a sob and threw his arms around Aoi, holding him as tight as he could, wrapping the orange coat around him like a blanket. “I’m sorry,” he uttered.

“I want her _back_.”

“I’m so sorry, Aoi.”

“ _I want her back!_ ”

Light was right. Aoi would be so happy if he would finally live for himself from now on.

“I don’t _want_ to!” he screamed, before he realized the voice he was yelling at was inside his head. “ _I want you back!_ ”

It was not worth it. It was too much hardship. I loved him too much to do this to him.

“I’ll do _anything_! I don’t _care_!” he shrieked. “Akane! _Akane!_ ”

I heard the conviction in his voice and it broke my heart. [He could have been so happy.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10219865/chapters/29090733)

This was wrong. This was not the way it was supposed to end, and he knew it. There was another life he was supposed to be living instead, one where I was alive.


	18. Less Than Zero

“Nah, there ain’t any windows on this side. _Shit_ , kid, didn’t even know you were blind.”

He gave a grunt. There was a creak of metal. Aoi blinked his eyes open, but the door still had not budged.

“What’d you hear?” the detective asked. “I heard her voice again, too, but… can’t figure out a damn thing she’s sayin’ this time.”

The _door_ , the number [9] door. Behind that door, she needed their help. Aoi’s voice was raspy and cracked when his dry lips opened to call out, “Akane.”

The warmth underneath him shifted. Just above his head, he heard a startled, stifled cry. A pair of arms wound around and under his shoulders and constricted. “Aoi,” said a voice that was hard to identify as Light’s behind all of the tension. “Aoi, are you alright?”

He started to ask what Light meant, then he felt the cold floor against his legs and under the hand he held out to steady himself. His head was cushioned between the crook of Light’s elbow and his lap. Where Light was not supporting him, he was sprawled out on the ground. There was a thick, deep blank in his head about where he had been before this, as though an emotional dream had disappeared as soon as he woke up. In the span of a slow blink, the big detective was crouching over him, wide-eyed and anxious.

“Th’hell happened?” Aoi asked slowly.

“You collapsed,” Light said, relaxing his grip bit by bit. Aoi could not think of the word for the tone his voice had taken.

The detective put his big hand against Aoi’s forehead. “You feelin’ okay?”

Aoi snapped his head away. When he tried to wrench free of Light’s hold, it only grew tighter.

“You were standing at the door with us,” Light went on, his voice still pressed, “and you… just sank to the ground.”

He sounded almost offended, or hurt. There was a better word for it.

“You’ve been unconscious and unresponsive for seven minutes,” he said, and then Aoi felt a shudder in the arms wrapped around him.

Before Aoi could quite figure out that the word for the way Light sounded was _scared_ , it occurred to him that seven minutes was a very large chunk of the eighteen-minute time limit Akane had to solve the puzzle in the incinerator. Without knowing quite how his limbs were moving, he shot forward, breaking through Light’s grip, to launch himself back at the other side of the number [9] door.

“Aoi!” Light yelled. “Aoi, don’t—!”

“Where is she?!” Aoi demanded, banging an open palm against the metal. “How much time do we have till—?!”

“Kid, hey, careful,” snapped the detective, “you were just—”

“ _Yes!_ I did! I solved it!”

All three of their voices cut out at the same time when they heard the excited shout from beyond the door.

“Well, I mean, really, you solved it for me, but… I copied everything you did! Now I just have to press enter!”

Aoi could barely find his voice after hearing hers, choked by tears but bursting with determination. “Who… who’s she talking to?”

“Nobody, s’far’s we can figure. Not that Hongou guy, that’s for sure,” said the detective, low and gruff. “She’s been… kinda talkin’ to herself, ever since you been out.”

“Okay!” she called out. “I will!”

“She’s definitely talking to _someone_ ,” Light said, and turned his head towards Aoi. His grim expression vanished as soon as a loud, tinny sound hit their ears.

“< _Emergency shut down command has been acknowledged. Incineration system has been shut down._ >”

Aoi’s throat was so tight that a sigh of relief came out like a cough, and then he choked on a harder cough, hard enough that it made his eyes water, or maybe that was not from the coughing at all. The detective let out a huff like he was bidding farewell to three years off of his life, but then he cracked an unbreakable smile. Light was aglow with hope, faith, love, and luck.

“It worked! It _worked_!” Akane cried. “The incinerator shut down! It _worked_!”

Aoi propped an arm against the door and leaned his head into it. “It fuckin’ did, you little,” he whispered.

Through the wall, they heard the faint sound of the final bracelet authenticating, the grind of the final pulled lever, and the rumble of the final door opening. On the other side stood a girl, her little chest heaving, her whole body shaking, and her teary eyes widening.

“ _Akane!_ ”

In the throes of sobs, she managed to shout, “Aoi!” and threw herself into his open arms.

Their hearts were beating in a new way, blood buzzing through veins where before it was throbbing. They had been holding their breath for the past eighteen minutes, waiting to see each other again, and now that they were finally reunited, they were holding each other too tightly to breathe. The world seemed to shift as they held each other, or perhaps the boat was just swaying under their feet. She squeezed him under his shoulder blades, and he locked her head against his chest with his arm. They could feel each other trembling.

“Oh, Aoi,” Akane sniffed, nuzzling her face into his scarf.

“Akane,” he choked, shutting his eyes to keep back the tears.

He felt her stir and push back from his embrace, which wounded his heart for the split second before he recognized the chirping of her detonator.

She waved the two spare bracelets dangling from her fingers over the scanner before pressing her palm flat against it and registering the final number. Aoi reached for the lever, but she caught it first, wrenching it down with a determined yank. When she saw him hovering over her shoulder, she patched together a smile despite the sheen of tears covering her face. In a blink, he had her under his arm.

“Alright, let’s get out of here,” he said, nodding to the detective and Light. “If we don’t book it, we might run into Hongou again.”

With a grim nod, Light touched a hand back to the closed door [9] behind them for a point of reference before striding back to the stairs. The detective hung behind him for a few seconds until he suddenly jolted forward with the realization that he should probably not let the blind member of the group lead the way. He grabbed the door to the staircase, propped it open, and looked over his shoulder.

Akane was clinging to her brother’s hand and, managing little laughs through her tears, lacing her fingers together with Light’s. With a broad grin, twitching at the corners from the threat of tears of his own, the detective waved them in through the open door. Akane looked up with bright, wet eyes before surging forward into a sprint, dragging her startled brother and her new friend behind her, all three stumbling and smiling.

The echoes of the narrow staircase brought the nervous giggling out of their chests into an exhilarated cacophony of joy. Even when they were panting through fire in their lungs, their breaths came out in shouts of laughter. When Aoi glanced at Light, he saw the same sheen of wetness at the corners of his eyes that Aoi was rubbing away from his own. He followed his sister, the hair bouncing against her back, the hands clenched so tight they had gone white, the teary smile she shot over her shoulders every few seconds, up the stairs and out into open air.

A small weight fell into Light’s right hand, and another into Akane’s, and another hit the floor with a clack. Light let go of Akane’s hand to run his thumb over the face of the bracelet numbered [5], while Akane let the number [4] bracelet tumble the rest of the way down from her brother’s wrist. The detective kicked bracelet [1] out of his path as he squeezed out of the doorway. At their feet already were the other six bracelets, the teeth of the clasps hanging open just an inch, but it felt as wide as the smoky grey sky over their heads.

The rush of icy wind hit them at the same time as the delighted cheers of the other children. Nona hopped through her limp to grab Akane in a shaky hug. Aoi thought Nona stumbled into him after that for balance, until her arms snaked around his ribs and squeezed.

“I thought you weren’t gonna come back,” she said in a high voice, then sniffed. Aoi was frozen for a moment, but the second Nona tried to lean away, he grabbed hold of her shoulders and pulled her back into a hug she would remember for the rest of her life.

Claire had jumped into Akane’s arms in the meantime, and had to be pried off by Ren, only to wind herself around Light even more inextricably. Despite being younger than her, Nobu was still big enough to lift Akane’s feet off the ground a little when he snagged her into a warm hug. Aoi was too distracted by the sight to notice it when Claire slammed into him from behind, knocking a laugh out of his chest that he scarcely recognized as his own.

Then, with tears and boundless admiration welling up in his eyes, Nobu threw his arms as far around the detective as he could reach.

From then on it was exuberant chaos. After slipping away from Aoi and again past Ren, Claire scrambled up the detective’s back so quickly she defied gravity: she grabbed a fistful of his blazer at the waist, swung up her feet to plant them against his hips, then sprang up from there to grab his shoulders. Ren darted in to support her swinging legs lest she fall from that great height, but when she did not fall, Ren just sank into hugging the startled detective from behind. Nona jumped to his side from Aoi’s arms, clinging to his sleeve. Akane settled near his waist, small, warm, and full of life.

“H-hey, now,” said the detective in a shy, low mumble, wearing a sheepish grin. He could only move one of his hands, and he settled it in Akane’s hair, giving it a little tousle.

From further down the deck came the voices of Yuuki and Hideyoshi, bright with relief. They could not rightly recall when they had linked hands, not when each of the pair was balanced on the knife’s edge of a breakdown, trying to hold on for just a little longer, and that was probably why they started holding onto each other. Their words tripped over each other and intertwined about a lifeboat prepared to embark. The detective’s eyebrows shot up, and then his smile grew with pride as he wrangled his armfuls of children out to the edge of the ship.

“Good kids,” he called to Yuuki and Hideyoshi. Those two words of praise settled into their hearts and lifted their spirits, after so many years of not hearing enough of it.

Aoi gave Light a glance. He was holding his arm out for Light to take almost by instinct at this point, but the clatter of little footsteps following the detective’s lumbering gait was likely more than enough guidance. Aoi could see that in Light’s easy smile, a brighter one than he had ever seen Light wear before, perhaps identical to the smile Aoi felt on his own face, full of a joy for life that neither of them had known for many years.

Light stopped when he felt a hand take his sleeve, though it gave only a gentle pull, a touch not wholly intended to hold him back. He stopped and turned to Aoi anyway.

Aoi’s mouth filled with cold, salty air when he opened it and could not figure out what to say. Eventually he breathed out a rough little, “Hey,” but he did not have the words ready for the rest.

The rest, he thought as Light tilted his head in confusion, was too muddled and confused to say aloud. The rest was in Light’s patient smile as he waited, and as Aoi felt achingly aware of how Light had waited by his side for every turbulent turn this terrible night had taken. The rest was something in the air that was tousling Light’s shaggy hair and chilling their weary bones enough that Aoi finally gave Light’s arm a firm tug towards him. The rest was the warmth he had felt with Akane safe and snug against his chest, and then when Nona and Claire, too, wrapped their arms around him, and then in his heart when all of these kids—with hope, faith, love, and luck brimming in their smiles—swarmed the detective and marched towards freedom, and finally now, holding Light tighter than he thought he would hold anyone new in his life.

He felt Light’s arms against his back in an instant. When he could not bring himself to let go after a few seconds, he felt Light’s shoulders shudder and settle under his grip. A sigh warmed his cheek. Light’s hair was fine and soft against his face. At the same time that Aoi finally figured out the one word he could say, Light was already saying the same thing.

“Thanks,” Aoi said.

“Thank you, Aoi,” Light whispered.

They let out two shy little laughs after that, and squeezed each other tighter.

_Even when she shouted, Ennea’s voice fell dead in the cool, dusty air in the expanse of flat land surrounding Building Q in every direction. Every head turned towards her when they heard her faint cry of, “They’re out! They’re off the boat!”_

Nona thought about lifting her voice to tell the children piling into the lifeboat that their siblings were safe, as well, but she could see in their bright eyes and smiles that they already knew.

As the detective took Light by the shoulder to guide him into the vessel, Aoi lifted his little sister over the edge of the railing, feeling her vibrate with giggles in his arms. Then she and Light turned around, and they were both holding out hands to Aoi. A thought struck him, a strange one, considering all of the hardship they had just endured: _this is the way it’s supposed to be_.

“Alright, we got four paddles on here,” said the detective once the lifeboat reached the water. “I’ll take two. Need a couple’a you older boys to take the other two on the other end, alright?! We gotta get away from this ship ’fore it goes under!”

Aoi stirred at the call, only to feel with greater clarity the little arms clinging to his waist. His weight kept shifting—up to rise, then back towards Akane, then up, then back—until the gentle weight and warmth of a slender, navy blue jacket brushed his arm as it fell onto Akane’s shoulders.

“Stay here, Aoi,” Light said with an easy smile, adjusting his black hoodie. “You have one job right now, and that’s making sure this one gets home safe.”

_This is the way it’s supposed to be._

And yet it felt so backwards at the same time.

Reluctance slowed Ren’s movements as much as fatigue when she slid out from between Yuuki and Claire to move towards the second open oar. Before she could take a step, a firm shove came down on her shoulder. She stumbled back into her seat. Above her, Nobu flashed a grin.

“He said _boys_ , right?” he said simply, and his smile turned warm.

The little boat rocked and swayed, and then it moved, and then the hull of the Gigantic was getting farther away. Aoi closed his eyes while he took in a deep, slow breath. When he opened them again, the ship was even more distant, and Akane was still right here, nestled in his arms.

“Akane,” he whispered, because she knew, because she was at the center of everything, tracing her fingers along the puppet strings of every soul in the world to see how they would dance, “what _happened_?”

She was a goddess, an immortal of quantum mechanics, but she was also a tired, scared twelve-year-old girl, and she burst into tears again when everything in her little head became just too heavy to carry anymore. Her brother stayed at her side to help hold her up, murmuring little comforts, “it’s okay, I got you, you’re okay, I love you, I love you, I love you,” and she knew she could believe every word, because she was still here. It felt like a hazy dream, but morning had come, and she was alive.

“<Look,>” said Claire softly, pointing across the horizon at a point of piercing light. “<Sunrise.>”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading everyone!
> 
> While this is the "final chapter", and this is going to be marked as "completed", this story is not quite over. An epilogue will arrive, much later, several months later, and probably you can guess exactly how many months I'm planning on if I tell you that much, especially since I finished this on Akane's birthday.
> 
> Hope to see you in November.


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